The Witch Boy

by Marcie Lynne Tentchoff


By a mountain stream he dances
to the strains of old time songs
drifting from some high tech speakers
in the valley down below.

Wild, mad jigging, fingers weaving
curses, charms, unholy jests,
casting spells that flash like lightning,
from his dark, uncaring eyes.

Once, he thinks, he had some purpose,
hopes that surged within his breast,
poetry, a song for singing,
harmonized with other voice.

But those days are gone and over,
mortal as he can not be,
loveless, lifeless, grim and bitter,
mounded in some poor girl's grave.

So he'll spin, and laugh in casting
memories as dim as smoke
down upon the city dwellers,
that they'll suffer through his dreams.

He is free to live and glory
in three hundred carefree years,
teased by notes he can't remember,
blending with the fiddle tunes.


Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is an Aurora Award winning poet/writer from the west coast of Canada, where she lives in the middle of a rainforest with her family and various animals, both invited and not. Between the raccoons in the roof, the deer in the garden, the chocolate-stealing skunks, and the occasional visiting cougar, she's written poems and stories that have appeared in such magazines as On Spec, Weird Tales, Dreams and Nightmares, and Illumen, as well as in anthologies and online publications.

When asked whether or not she believes in ghosts, Marcie replied, "tough one. I'm honestly not sure if I believe in ghosts. I have little problem believing in all manner of other-than-human creatures and beings, some mostly spiritual... but the spirits of dead humans hanging around? Maybe. I'm not sure why that should be so much harder for me to believe in, but somehow it is. Let's say that I don't disbelieve."


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