Resistance. Had to resist. Ward off. Deflect. Exorcise. Defy. Apotropaic experiments to shift tone & danger. Apo, away, trepein, to turn. Make the day an amulet. And there were women everywhere across the land, children women, and girl women and they women and fluid women and men who were women and boy women and women from the past on the tongues of mind & ear and images of women everywhere: ancestor women. Out on the streets. And everyone woman that day. I am woman they said. And it had already happened if you stopped to think. Winning in maenad heaven, but could earthly heart hold? The day said I am woman. The day got up and walked this far then paused to take stock. It was the last chance to be observant and cry and stomp and take stock. What worth if not be accountable. It would be theater, a spectacle, come pay, or come lie down in fluid bosom of woe mankind.

working with willow rods that’s the method,
bring great bundles of them,
put on the ground scatter them
pronounce them, saying:

“here’s one”
“here’s another one”
“here’s one, there…over there…”

willow rods, very consoling          we’ll clear the ground
you don’t have to be a Scythian…

and then the ones behaving more like women use a different method

they take a piece of the inner bark of a lime tree
cut it into many pieces
which they keep twisting and untwisting around their fingers as they
make effigies of themselves, willow rods of women saying:

“there’s a turn”
“there’s a turning”
“there’s a rowdy one”
“there’s a moist one”

“there’s one we lost to negligent wind”
“another one burned up”
“one folded down a sparrow’s cheek”
“how many turnings in a twisty one?”

a million, more than you can ever hold
makes the pronouncers happy
surveyors of tractor and sage
and when all goes out

remember eclipse telling you this could all go out
women too?

but for love & mystery
willows rods, willows rods
you know this
to fool the hearts of men

staying up all night, notice the moon and its macabre signal

and hemp vapor tents on the horizon

walk upside down in the footprints of the living