April 1 Poem

If the sacred land were really sacred, you reason, would not
some divine assistance keep the bulldozers away?
But the fact of its destruction doesn’t make it less sacred.
Throughout the centuries, when one culture conquered 
another, it would build its houses of worship on the same sites.
Ergo, an oil pipeline is an altar of worship.

Whence the fear of magic? An old woman boiling weeds.
The physical stuff of magic (setting aside the charlatans), 
is of the earth: herbs, blood, flowers, sparkling stones, hair, fire, 
lunar light, organs, felines, water. The shape that crystals take,
or a spider’s web: a geometric fruit of the earth.

Things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy
A scholar defines magic separate from religion
saying that it’s an individual matter, rather than a collective experience,
tending toward secrecy. So then, what is a daemon?