To the best of their knowledge,
boiling the witch alive was the
worst option. This they knew
only in retrospect, as the Dark
seeped from the swamp into
the groundwater and up into
the skeletal limbs of the birches
permanently encircling the village
until their pale bark turned gray
and animals began to disappear—
first wildfowl, then pets, beasts
of burden. Now the ice has returned
and helplessly the local folk hold
their hands to the ashen sky and cry
“What can we do to make this better?”
Sometimes as the wind howls
its response through wooden chimes
outside the jail house you can hear
the Dark whispering under its breath:
try, try, try.
Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Meridian, Rattle, North American Review, The Southern Review, Fence, and Atlanta Review among others. He publishes Notebooking Daily, and edits the literary journal Coastal Shelf.