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In the shade of a maple tree, on a grassy hill,

three women laid hands on me.

One saw a cave in my hips. Another felt bricks

rising from a brook. The last heard a bellow

from deep within the woods. We were strangers

come together to spend an afternoon

drinking tea & sharing stories of cellular bad luck,

then suddenly makeshift healers

summoning our mothers' lessons on touch—

on heat & symmetry, tenderness & release.

From above, we might have looked like sundials

or spokes on a round knitting loom.

We wanted so badly to believe

in our ministry we ignored the obvious.

That milk thistle grows here because of stolen land.

The auspicious arrival of geese is the result of

migratory patterns. Even the static inside our cells

likely explainable by simple division.

It's embarrassing, sometimes, how far I'll go

searching for unprecipitated magic,

much I'll trust that pine air cures cancer

or the hawk overhead is only keeping watch.

Source: A Dangerous Place (Sarabande Books, Inc., 2021)