It's Still Life

The Witches of Arundel

Side by side bones of two women,
blurred and buffed by earth’s shift
and rewritten by centuries of ink –
their plainness hardly drew an eye.

Memory of that day at Tumulus Copse
is lost, a faint scrap hint of a footpath
passes a flat grey stone, the trees
always bone-riddled with bird song.

Pentagrams regularly knotted
to the branches of birch trees,
stones placed in such a way
as to deny their state as natural.

Children eat ice cream, play with
ducks in the pond where these
two women were nearly drowned,
then brought back to air in gasps.

When did their eyes recede
from sight to inward thought.
Two women whose limit of power
was to snap and burn like a twig.

Sunday’s Six Sentence Story: the word is “Limit”. Capitular records of Chichester Cathedral dated 1645, Martha Bruff (midwife) and Ann Howsell (healer) – ordeal by water and convicted as witches.  Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.