The Witches's Wood By Mary E. Coleridge

 Judy Underwood chasing Rainbow/ Google.com

 

Thursday Flash Fiction Week 28: Innocence and Dreams

 

There was a wood, a witches' wood,
All the trees therein were pale.
They bore no branches green and good,
But as it were a gray nun's veil.
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They talked and chattered in the wild
from morning dawn to set of sun,
like men and women that have sinned
whose thousand evil tongues are one.
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Their roots were like the hands of men,
Hard and brown with clutching gold.
Their foliage women's tresses when
the hair is withered, thin and old.
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There never did a sweet bird sing
for happy love about his nest.
The clustered bats on evil wing,
Each hollow trunk and bough passed.
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And in the midst a pool there lay
of water white, as tho' a scare
had frightened off the eye of day
and kept the Moon reflected there.