Long Playing Egg Poem

Eggs: Poached. On griddled croissant toast with hot smoke salmon.
Song: "Birth of the Witch" by Master Wilburn Burchette from Guitar Grimoire
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Poem: "An Inn for the Coven" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Originally published in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, ed. Ada Límon, also published in The New Economy by Gabrielle Calvocoressi)

An Inn for the Coven

Witch hazel going wild along the
walkway. And all the spots to sit
and read our spell books. And all
the ways to keep them out. Two
black cats and a beaver who eats
carrots all day. Every room an
upper room even on the ground
floor. And bee boxes in the way
way back. And the sweet man who
comes to keep them. All our loves
are witches too. Or warlocks. All
our children and all our children.
Welcome. Water running in the
brook. Clean enough to drink from
our hands. And seven sources. And
a deep well. All for us and all for
those we bring over. Four swings in
the branches. A library in every
hollow. And birds. So many birds
we stop trying to name them. We’ll
just let them be with their own
names. Maybe they’ll tell us.
Porches. Tomatoes in the summer
and pumpkins in the fall. And curry
leaves and curry blossoms. Jasmine
in the rooms at night. All loves
protected. All of us playing
cribbage on the lawn.

Note:  Feeling witchy this post. On the one hand, you might say there's nothing witchy about these eggs. I say there is something witchy about all eggs. And poaching an egg feels like conjuring magic. Water at a low boil. A shot of vinegar. Stir to slow swirl and slide the egg into the vortex. Three minutes later, a little white satchel of witchcraft with gold inside. Alchemy.

I have a book, Albertus Magnus: Egyptian Secrets, which is a grimoire of spells and prayers and remedies. It is not, despite its name, a work of the 13th century alchemist, but likely that of an 18th-century  Swabian (Germany) author who appropriates Magnus's name in order to lend the cures more authority. It is offered up without mockery; it is not some ironic jest at Magnus or a send-up of white witchery; rather, the spells, prayers, and homeopathy are offered up in all seriousness- I want to say genuinely, but it's hard to know if the purveyor of the snake oil knows it to be snake oil. In any event, either because people actually used it or because it has become a curio, the book-- to its credit, has been in publication, on and off, for a few hundred years. What is fake and real is all muddled up, in a very twenty-first century way. I thought I'd share a few choice egg remedies. Let me know how they work out.

          To Destroy Worms: The cancer is healed by means of a plaster made of the yellow of the yellow of an egg, enzian, Easter herbs and centrifolium, all mixed up to a powder. This preparation apply often.
          When a Beast has the Erysipelas, and the Water looks as Red as Blood: Write the letters below upon a hen's egg, and give it the animal to eat:
                                  K a o r K S S O r E z o n r h
                           a r K O C tz tz a h u r o x K a o tz a
                                   E a E S x i i x a r o t t t o x
          To Obtain Money: Take the eggs of a swallow, boil them, return them to the nest, and if the old swallow brings a root to the nest, take it, put it into your purse, and carry it in your pocket, and be happy.
          How to Beautify the Face: In the first place, take twelve or twenty-four fresh eggs, put them in a glazed pot, pour vinegar over the eggs, cover this well and keep it for eighteen days in a cellar; then pour the vinegar off, soak two loaves of wheaten bread in a quart of goat's milk, then take white wort, cut fine and mix together, put all in an alembic and distil to a water.
          When a Cow is Constipated: Take some bees'-wax, melt it and pour it into one pint of warm milk, stir it well, then beat four eggs, yolks and whites together, and give it to the cow all at once.

 And here's an excerpt from Numero Group's webpage on Master Wilburn Burchette: 
California mail-order mystic Master Wilburn Burchette was first known from his ads, hidden in the back pages of Fate Magazine, Beyond Reality, and Gnostica News. On offer: Burchett’s seven-part, block-printed “Psychic Meditation Course,” designed to teach people how to listen to music. To go along with his lessons, Burchette sold a series of instrumental guitar and electronic records featuring ornate hand-drawn cover designs, complete with listening instructions from the Master himself. Since just his twelfth year, Burchette had been transfixed by the parapsychological, spending as much time reading books on Tibetan mysticism fundamentals as he did practicing guitar, the vibrations of which he used to create tonal pictures and patterns. After time spent teaching classical guitar, Master Wilburn Burchette released seven albums in the seven years spanning 1971 through 1977, before abruptly burning and discarding everything related to his musical explorations.

And on the poem. I admire Calvocoressi's "An Inn for the Coven" for lines like "All our loves / are witches." I also love the easy tone and voice that bats around the canned pop-culture spookery of witches. No cobwebs and pointy hats. No chin warts. Instead, with that swept aside, we get a kind of utopia, a rich natural abundance, a gentle harmony between people and the world. Maybe the point is that our reality now as we know it is bewitched, our souls trapped in little screens, the world paved in fire. So Calvocoressi's (de)witchery takes us forward or back to some other way. A portal. Master Wilburn Burchette would, I think, approve.