The Wiccan

and plants itself sweetly in your garden and becomes a weed you don’t care or can’t bear to pick.

One day, I hope you notice those young, yellow petals: how their stems adapt to the changing winds, how they are relentless. No one cares for a dandelion, but the dandelion survives anyway. How they thrive, alive, so far from where they started, how much they must have seen.

I hope you notice the dandelions one day and say, “My, how much you’ve grown!” And that you mean it, secretly, for me.

THE WICCAN

Sean Vriese

Weep for forgone elegance! Transfixed by din and tumble, muddled not by magic, through logic truth does hide.

In a dream dances vision of a clean cottage which follows form—it exists, only in premonition.

Centuries countless fly by to place a memory in an addled mind—forever held, this fantasy now lost.

Can mother do what mother will after fire does cease? It matters little to those in sand and ash, buried deep.

And one acidic day we perish, blasted by our folly.

N’one frigid day we cherish, strangled by the holly.