Village Witch

We are all born witches. We are born alchemists. Who remembers squishing out the mucilaginous oils from Hibiscus with their baby hands? What folly grabbed you as you followed a butterfly into the rabbit’s burrow? Or marvelled at the light shining on a spider’s web? Did you instinctively know which plants to avoid as you ran wild in the fields, lest you got stung? Did you slurp on purple berries dropping heavily from the great tree?

Leonard Koren*