Wolves and Witches

Cathy Cullis

There's this debate: can a wolf swallow
a whole witch without chewing.
He's not for telling.

But last winter the girl we thought
had fallen down the well
was seen slipping out

from beneath a wolf's shadow,
a regurgitation of herself,
crooked from stomach burial

and she slipped through
the trees with branches at her feet,
lifted across the stream.

I've asked a witch if she
could swallow a wolf.
She declined to say.

But last summer we saw together
a wolf and a witch straddle the sky
just as in those hand-tinted story books.

And they seemed so enraptured
ripping the clouds with their tails.
They were so away with themselves.

Cathy Cullis