The Witch in Winter

The Witch in Winter
By Lorraine Schein

When the snow falls, it covers everything --
and the people in the village
and the children in the town
watch the snow falling,
falling down.

But the witch in her forest cottage
watching her cauldron bubble and cook,
is much too busy to go to
her white-piled window to look.

Her cat goes to the window
to watch the swirling snow fall --
but his mistress doesn’t see it
at all, at all.

When the snow falls, it covers everything --
and the people in the village
and the children in the town
watch the snow falling,
falling down.

* * *

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, Full Bleed, Enchanted Conversation, and Little Blue Marble, in the anthology Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath, and in Hybrid Fiction. The Futurist's Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press. 

What advice do you have for other poets? 

Keep on writing and try not to compare yourself with prose writers, even though you will probably never be as widely read or well-compensated. Also, don't take sides in the form/rhyme vs. free verse camps—try to write in both styles. I enjoy writing poems in both, and my poem here shows one facet of my various styles.