Smoke, it is all smoke in the throat of eternity. . . . For centuries, the air was full of witches Whistling up chimneys on their spiky brooms cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe, as they flew over rooftops blessing & cursing their kind. We banished & burned them making them smoke in the throat of god; we declared ourselves "enlightened." "The dark age of horrors is past," said my mother to me in 1952, seven years after our people went up in smoke, leaving a few teeth, a pile of bones. The smoke curls and beckons. It is blue & lavender & green as the undersea world. It will take us, too. O let us not go sheepishly clinging to our nakedness. But let us go like witches sucked heavenward by the Goddess' powerful breath & whistling, whistling, whistling on our beautiful brooms.