That witch is good

How many times
have I heard
someone regret
that they can't turn back the hands of Time
and make the pain go away
or change the outcome
or make it better
than chance dictated
it should stay?

I don't know
too many people
who would actually like
to return
to the river
that swept them away
when they express their desire
to have things back
the old way
before the current tripped their feet

like fly fishers in hip waders

stuck
patiently gathering their lines
and resetting their lures

as much as they struggle
to understand what upset their balance
and made them fall backward
and carried them toward
some distant sea
perhaps Tynemouth

or Perce

true
some have clung
to the faint hope
of a reversing current

which was no more
than the tide of the ocean
repeating on the stream
just long enough
to give the illusion
of turning back
the river
and with it
the hands of Time
but all that salt water
would eventually be expressed
back to the ocean
and the balance would be redressed
the delta re-established
and any doubt disconfirmed
unceremoniously
as finally as fire

but we know
we can't do that
go back
do it over again
say the words
that might have been
stuck in your throat
and ask your question
or make your feelings known
or do your part
to make the way things really were
appear
before being obliterated
with the casual swipe
of a brush on a white board

so much smokeless dust

before your eyes

I'm not sure
if you remember
Norman Lloyd
perhaps only from St. Elsewhere

where the focus was mostly
on his steely blue eyes
and his steadying voice
but he was big
before the talkies
and famous for the odd stunt
like the time he
breaks his fall
by advancing the hands of Time

to when it would
perhaps
be safer
but we never find out
and some still imagine
that he was actually stopping the hands of Time

one time you confided
to me
something that I would recall
endlessly
and tease you with
you had said
how frightened you were
as a child
when the nuns who taught you
made you pray every day
to hold fast that which is good
but at the time you thought
they had said witch rather than which
and invoked the witched you feared
were present but not seen
so when you said
nay prayed
Hold fast that witch is good

perhaps you imagined Glinda

the Good Witch of the North

but I know you were still struggling
not to touch
that invisible witch
let alone hold her close
to your chest
but you did what you were told
and have felt icky ever since
as much from the apprehended hex
that witch placed on your head
as from the fact
that you had invoked her yourself
albeit with coaching
that fell short of threats and menances
but was insidious and invidious nevertheless

so you lathered and scrubbed and washed
and repeated that
more times than Lady Macbeth

and with the same effect
something witchy still on your hands
and it wasn't that which is good
it was thoroughly untoward
and hard to explain
except that you were never free
of its invisible grit or tingle
somebody said it was either guilt
or OCD
or a brush with relationship trauma and feelings of shame
but all you knew
was that it was hard
part and parcel
of lingering long
and loving longer

and you wouldn't have had it any other way
and you tolerated the teasing
and were OK with the occasional reminder
of where you had been
of what had you had done
of the very real dangers
of living longest
beyond your tormenters
or the torture of the untoward
to which you had no choice
but to comport yourself
boldly
but no less uneasily
in the certain hope
that when the tingle and the itch came again
you wouldn't hesitate
to rub and to scratch
until the river flowed on
and the feeling passed.