Kathleen Goldblatt

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Remembering Agnes Sampson and the Women of North Berwick, Scotland, 1591 in an Uncertain America

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For women of the witch hunts

In last night’s dream a woman lopes along the edge of the horizon.
            January. No coat. 
She looks back,

next to the door,
a lantern for when she was summoned at night. Birthing—

my grandmother, too, would’ve been taken.

Before she was fed to the fire, a rope on her neck.
Before that, naked, shaved, examined for the devil’s mark.
Iron pins in her body to see if she bled.

In jars on a shelf: thistle, goldenseal, nettle.

In their beds, six children waiting.

Grandmother gave ginger for cramps, kümmel for the stomach.
            Garlic for everything.

No talisman could keep them safe,
after the trial, twenty-five hundred more. 

Ashes left in the shadow of fear.

There are fires ahead, still burning.

Kathleen Goldblatt (she/her), author of the chapbook, Our Ghosts Wait Patiently, lives in Rhode Island where she reflects on poetry during walks with her dog, Archie, who never tires of listening. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, The Healing Muse, Psychological Perspectives and The Ekphrastic Review among others. She is a mental health advocate and psychoanalyst.