The witching hour

It is the witching hour.
All the good little children are tucked into their beds and only the crooked ones remain awake
The ones who stay up under the covers with flashlights
Whose lips are sewn shut or glued open 
Who warble like songbirds and screech like records and whisper like nails on cellophane
The little girls who don't comb their hair and who talk back to teachers and lead schoolyard attacks
The little boys who lend out all their hands and polish their spectacles and limp to and fro.
It is the witching hour and magic creeps in through the open windowsills of odd children.
They wait in beds wrapped in cotton or in kitchens surrounded by cookie crumbs or lying on hardwood floors
Breathing the soft song of lumber.
Magic stirs their restless bones and licks their hair and prickles the soles of their feet
And then they are all swept up in the magic like a child with a toy and they cannot let go.
The writers write whole novels and the singers hit the high Cs and the commanders plan invisible troops and the readers
Sink into cushions and fall through rabbit holes and fly broomsticks far away
And for a bit, the witching hour brings them home
Waters them like sun-starved flowers and pulses them through with vitamins of understanding
And minerals of inspiration
But it cannot always be the witching hour
And they must trudge back to school to fight with more teachers and protest more rules and refuse to write dull essays
And draw pictures of fruit and sunsets instead of enchanted castles and how autumn tastes
And they wait at their scuffed desks and do their work indignantly until night falls and they rise
For the witching hour will come again.