little witch were
Submitted by Haggard & Halloo on June 9, 2009 – 7:44 am2 Comments
little witch were
by anthony lucero
little witch were
your hair any less
golden you’d be
a flower were your hat
any less black you’d
be a star were your
boots any less
barefoot i’d hear the
waves break in your
heart little witch
i don’t know where you
come from and i don’t
know where you go
but the answer is more
important than dreams
and god and sunshine
the answer is more
important than death
and love and promises
little witch the answer
is the answer to the
question we never ask
we couldn’t know to ask
that doesn’t exist the
question i am asking
you now.
©
…hanging like an effigy burning. Sacrificial questions are asked not because an answer is needed but because it must be breached. Where a statement would have no power, a question strikes through and makes someone else unsure of what to say.
Conversation is a bold act. In a lop-sided relationship a question points out absurd assumptions. To speak an answer is to admit out loud a defense that can be confronted. To not answer is to confirm the obvious without a position. Either of those reactions to the question opens the relationship so new stuff can come in and old stuff can leave. Without the question, it stagnates.
This poem seems to me like an invitation to change an untenable situation. All possible choices, the array of intimidating anythings, are reduced to two. The answer is. What more does it need to be?
and the question is. . .?