Healing

Grocers and intellectuals weigh everything,

said Zorba, dancing on the table.

My father was none of these;

he was a healer bent over

the torsion scale, the way he tapped

a crystalline powder on the weighing paper

adding a smidge with his spatula, 

taking back a half-smidge, on one side, 

then reaching for grains and scruples

on the other, achieving a magnificent balance,

an equipoise I can only aspire to.

Yet I also witnessed the way he triturated

fascists into dust with his mortar and pestle.

Vehemence and grace in a shamanistic tango. 

Remind me, father, how you tamed the germs,

conferred with microorganisms for a new homeland,

how fevers broke as you read the mercury

and you pacified the febrile world.

Was it those vapors you released from apothecary jars

presiding between globes of colored water?

What dervish danced in your eyes?

 

Now I have been knocked off center.

The world is burning up.

Was it an alcohol rub you used

or the ancient knowledge in your hands,

the silent incantation you didn’t need to sing?

How you overthrew fetid rhizomes and rancid roots

with aromatic buds and intoxicating herbs. 

In the midst of sirens and screams

I yearn for your macerating elixir

containing everything you believed in,

which taught us to heal ourselves.