Where is the promised cure? What are its forms
Applications, usefulness, implications
Tea, salve, tincture, poultice
That charm you wear around your neck
Under your shirt, bury it at the crossroads
Wormwood in bitter old age
Alamo for the fever, the boil that rises in the night
Alegria, blood of the deer, loosen the child’s tongue,
Quiet the aging heart, Anil del muerto since
The modern age you find indigestible
And chair-bound
Sunflower of the dead man may help
Borage for courage, cachana
Charm away mal del ojo
And what is our post-post-modern
Predicament save lack of courage
And the evil eye?
So many for stomach ache – chamisa, chimaja
Hinojo, poleo – cota to soothe you
Artemisia to sweat you – a small sip at a time.
But what of the plague that stalks us, masks us,
Isolates – what cure for the viral hate and disaffection
What remedio for the cancer inexorable in our breasts?
Inmortal and Osha and quiet prayer, and maybe
The rattlesnakes and the witches (unmasked without
Doubt) will keep their distance too.
Author: Duncan MacNae
Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees.
duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com
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