My Favorite Butternut Squash I love squash. I love all varieties of squash – zucchini and summer squash – acorn squash – spaghetti squash – buttercup squash – delicata squash – hubbard – pumpkin – just to name a few! There are so many kinds and so many ways of preparing this versatile vegetable – its Latin name is Cucurbita – that you could literally eat squash at every meal every day for a year and never repeat yourself. Acorn squash is usually on my Thanksgiving table. My son loves it with brown sugar and butter. I often also cook up some butternut squash. I adore butternut squash. It’s really…

poetry races through me like a blast of cold air off lake erie. dramatic clouds over white-capped water. sand & stone & searing exhilaration. i was kidnapped when i was 10 & sold to the gypsies. now i dance wildly every night & tell fortunes. poetry crackles in the campfire. poetry is the wine in the jug we pass. poetry is alive in my snapping fingers. my swirling red skirts. my magic red shoes. poetry. the great liberator. the lover of my life. poetry. savior of my soul. poetry. the damp grass underneath my back. a million stars over my head. *** About the Author:   Polly MacDavid lives in Buffalo,…

The Recovery Spiral and the Spiral Steps If you hang around AA for any amount of time, you will no doubt hear that you have to acquire a “Big Book” – the text of Alcoholics Anonymous – and read no other book – unless it’s the “Twelve and Twelve” – the AA book about the Twelve Steps and Twelve traditions – or one of the other “approved” literature that Alcoholics Anonymous World Services puts out. I myself own a Big Book and a Twelve and Twelve. Like everything associated with AA, there’s a lot to love about these books and a lot that honestly pisses me off about them. My…

  one day i take the train to the ocean. donovan is just bringing in his boat. his body is sweat shiny & glowing. donovan knows all about constellations.   donovan is just bringing in his boat. the sea air is salty & clean & fresh. donovan knows about constellations. he says the stars shine all day & all night.   the sea air is salt & clean & fresh. i think about everything he told me. he said the stars shine all day & all night. i swim until my teeth are chattering.   i dry myself off & put on lotion. one day i take the train to…

  that was the day we ate the fat fable. grandmother stuffed it with chopped leeks & herbs. made it savory with the usual platitudes. a thick rich moral gravy. later she told us the tale of our father as a little boy on the stone steps in albany. wrestling with angels. we always loved that one. laughter & tears. she could always spin a stirring story. once while walking she pointed to a house & told us of the family that had lived there. “they won the daily lotto,” she said. “millions of dollars. how far they fell.” the wheel of fortune. from heaven to hell.   *** About…

(samhain)       the leaves fly as i drive home blowing formica gold seventies orange & a washed-out green just a few bright reds this drought has made for a dull autumn still the sun reflects the jewelry in leaves yet clinging to trees the leaves fly after a frost so long in coming oh demeter i will miss you as you search for your daughter oh hecate i do revel in your golden splendor oh artemis i long to join you in this season’s hunt the leaves fly as i drive home the sun sets in a mass of growing clouds red & gold & purple & midnight…

Samhain and divination   When I moved into my new place this summer, I decided to reread all my spiritual books, starting with The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess by Starhawk, which I read for the first time exactly thirty years ago. I cannot stress how much this book changed my life. A good friend loaned me her copy and I literally copied it almost word for word by hand and then later typed up my handwritten notes. This was the basis of my original Book of Shadows. Written basically as a manual for group instruction, I used The Spiral Dance to teach…

Enchanting Apple Crisp   To me, it is not a proper Samhain celebration without a dish made of apples. Apples are sacred to several of my favorite goddesses and long ago, I took the name “AppleQueen” as a magical name. Apples, harvested in the fall, are a perfect offering for this Sabbat. Hecate is the goddess of Samhain but do not forget that Pomona, the goddess of Apples, has her own feast day November 1. Influenced by the Romans, the Celts easily integrated this feast day into their own Samhain festivities and later, when the Christians came, and Pagan rites went underground or were turned into some other acceptable form,…

The Issue of Powerlessness It’s a beautiful fall day and I am on my way to an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting. It’s not easy for me to get to meetings, because I don’t have a car and public transportation in the Western New York area leaves a lot to be desired. To attend a one-hour meeting means traveling at least forty-five minutes to an hour each way on the bus. For years, this dead time on the bus kept me from attending meetings at all and of course, I invariably ended up drinking again. I had to get real with myself – what’s the difference between wasting time with public…

  the next person she met was death. on a white horse riding through a field of red flowers. the sun was just rising & she had nowhere to go anyway. his touch was cold but his smile warmed her entire soul. immediately her past faded away like it never happened. the floating world is not heaven. not hell or purgatory or one of the many places a soul could go to after dying. it was a beautiful world. a sorrowful world. she never wanted to leave. it was in fact a world made just for her. a world her brain designed. a pageantry of silk & silence. polite propriety.…