WITCH HUNT

Do something.
They are everywhere.
Look:

Louise washing her wrinkled self
at the conference center sink,
naked and unashamed,
singing a hymn;

Elizabeth unafraid
to die in her house alone,
leaving the nasty nursing home
on the arm of her 90-year old attorney;

Hazel, Marion, Jean–
Three Graces, Weird Sisters–
dirty jokes about the curate,
roses from the old gay priest;

Bea by herself at dawn
along the lake,
hunting warblers,
fossils, walking fern;

Susan in her goatskin gloves
plucking nettles,
killing chickens
in their sleep.

Ann sharing her cane-stool
with the young ones
in Washington
just before the war.

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