June 3-9, 2019: Poetry from Marcus Severns and Eric Larson

Towards Perfection

An ounce of new herbs
Fills the pot to produce a –

And we cross our eyes like fingers
Since it’s so bitter –

A cure.

The doctor said take the pills,
The naturalist said herbs and tinctures;

The scholarly scientists said both:

So, after the hot steaming bitter sour swirl
Enters the mouth
So too do the little pieces of titanium filled pills.

Let us hope
This cures the illness

Since everyone seems
Unsure,

After all:
Medicine is only
Practice.

Otherwise

I want my wisdom
packaged and advertised
like beer brats, purchased for
pennies, cooked up somewhere
sterile, frozen next door, shipped
and ready to be reheated in just
under a second, consumed in
under two, while hoping those
sorry excuses for nutrients will
make me whole, strong and free forever.
 
But.
 
It doesn’t work like that,
does it?
 
Real wisdom is slow cooked
over hours and eons on the tepid stove
its ingredients peeled by dumb
cracked hands, grown in the yard of
quarter-acre lots, won from the threats
of flood, too little shade, wayward
neighbors’ baseballs – real risk, real
age – until finally it appears

on the summer supper table where
we gather and feast, tasting the cycles
of sun, moon, shine and rain, entire
generations of pests come and gone

the whole fine tragedy of this world, this
spinning thing we somehow trust.