Salem Village–outpost of godliness.  Surrounded by forest where the Wabanaki are massing.

Penetrated by the Devil.  The invisible world is everywhere.  Witches meet in the home of a pious family, right in front of them!

A strange creature beside the path at twilight. Turns into 3 women who fly off.

The specter of the old widow, suddenly in the room, tortures the sick girl with inhuman seizures.

The leading citizens knock on the widow’s door, examine her body. Find a teat, between her legs, where a dog or a hog must suckle.

Even Salem has fallen away.  Fewer attend church.  Fewer are baptized.  Tempted by the Quakers, or by slight innovations in doctrine.  There have been thefts. 

The family returns from the long sermon, to study further in the cold parlor.  In a hothouse of gossip, feuds.  Sunk in the invisible world.  With the Wabanaki at the first trees…

Next door, the sick girl still sees them butcher her parents.

In the meeting house, she faces her tormentor.  “Your movements, right now, are controlling my movements.”

The witches are hanged in small groups.  The churchgoer.  The one whose decades of loneliness broke her.  Buried outside the village.

But more and more are afflicted.  And more and more are signing the Devil’s book.

Their specters eat red bread and go forth in an assault.

God could make it stop.  The Devil is not free here, only on a long leash.  To do God’s bidding.  To chastise.

Finally, he can go to town.  Create demons of a whole new order. 

Play with the already-traumatized.  Throw the 80 year-old in jail, in winter.

The village is immersed in the Devil’s nature.  In the forest, the shamans of the Wabanaki sacrifice their firstborn.  Are becoming impervious to musket-fire.

A Black servant accuses the Governor’s wife.  A reverend is hanged.

The villagers are cleaving harder to God.  Crowding the church.  Getting baptized as adults.  They agree with the finest points of doctrine.  When will it be enough?

Feeling helpless, even after volunteering, we invented a ritual. Like the smoke of burned prayers, or releasing the dead in canoes…

Sitting in the grass, with a view of water through trees, we look closely at each other, till the core love rises.

We look closely in front of us, starting with the grass that lines our thighs, out to the horizon and the afterglow.

We each hold a hundred dollar bill, for the wherewithal to enjoy, and to help.  Asking for more, to have impact at scale…

And so on.  Assume that we’re now peaceful, clear.  In front of us is tremendous light.  Behind us is the world.

Now what?  We can’t be there in the room with Israel and Hamas.  Can’t speak to Putin or imprison him. 

So we sit, trying to…send.  Two figures dwarfed even by the grass. 

We spread our arms.  I feel the blasts of the shofar pass through me and on to the hostages, to the people of Gaza. 

The view:  pale blue-silver of night water, sense of new oxygen, this bird lifting off:  I try to pass it on, in a cloud that will reach and cover Israel, cover Ukraine.  Reach the homeless. That this good can rain on them, that they feel the force of my intentions, and it somehow helps.

But they may also taste the bile of my frustration, a new cynicism, burning their lips, their skin. It’s all so entrenched…

Next to me, you’re sending love.  Your intentions amplified by the Shekhinah.  Fighting off images of horror, you send out wave after wave. 

Her eyes are still closed.  I look around.  Behind her the tiny lizards are standing up in the grass, basking.  The man who’d been lying on a bench is sitting up.  He’s smiling and crying, tapping his heart.  Good signs.  Promising…

Yes, to get from point A to point B.  From bed to bathroom to kitchen.

Yes, to pace while thinking or talking on the phone.  Drift to the window and look out, seeing nothing or something…

But more than that—to walk down the street, just walk for a few minutes, and the surprising distance that piles up behind!

Or go deep in the woods on a trail, around a bend, and get to that little valley, that little stream, and stare at moss and branches, the flow over rocks.

Soon I’ll rejoin all the regular people.  Connect again to rabbits and deer.  To everything that works properly—bacteria, supercomputers…

Wasn’t everyone grinding bone on bone and limping heavily?  You in your car at the light, isn’t your right leg damaged on the brake?  You in the crosswalk, aren’t you in pain?

I’ve never seen a limping deer, but they must exist, lying on their good side on flattened grass deep in the thicket.  It’s just getting worse.  The prognosis is not good…

I bonded with an arthritic dog, and that was a consolation.

But now I have things in common with the great walkers—the daredevils who cross whole countries, even continents, sometimes walking backwards!

I relate to the pilgrims, on the way to Compostela, through the Pyrenees and passing Tortosa.  The marchers, heroic protestors of past and present, nod to me.

I stayed connected through pain and limping and a walker and a urine bottle to my father, deceased.  Now as I do wooden laps, my self-image changes; I feel his exterior surrounding me.  I have gray hair, am wearing a yellow sweater; I’m unusually present to children I don’t have.  He/we put in our time, do our laps, get stronger, come back to ourselves.  And soon we’ll unveil a new suave simplicity—nothing to see here!