Cut a stout black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins.
— “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” D.K. Gavan

Steal the harp and
strip our magick
tell us that the flute
is a measly thing,
an instrument of poverty
pull up our crops
and plant the foreign field
who the lowly flute calls
cries in the night
over the seas
and into the dark mix
of rough and tumbled lies
no Aillén mac Midgna
to put us all to sleep
with songs of curses
or the devil’s pipes
or quaint folk fun
as we raise our shields
against Aillén’s somnolent
stealing of our souls
and when I swing my shillelagh
like the proper crone I am
the human ghosts and goblins
only laugh, and call it
a mobility device, but
it’s a wizard’s wand
a druid’s device and
can you hear the drums
we’re still here, still here.

[Denise Dumars uses her blackthorn cane (aka a shillelagh) as a mobility device. She was privileged to have visited Ireland last year ahead of her trip to Glagow for Worldcon. It is one of her favorite countries, full of magick and mystery. Denise is a Hierophant with the Fellowship of Isis, headquartered, appropriately enough, at Huntington Castle in Enniscorthy, Ireland.]