Willow delights
in a moist and wet soil
            —here being silex babylonica.
            So notes Edward Stone; then adds

(to the Royal
Society): where ague
            chiefly abounds.
            Consider the genius of

the doctrine. When
find ye a thing
            seek
            there its cure. Or,

localize the lore.
Across the
            bramble floodplain, ivy thickens
            with a talc of poisons,

and beside it—root unto root—the pale gem
jewelweed,
            taller, many-round-pronged ovate leaf
            and sallow bloom, so

we've learned
to snap
            the stalk, smear a drop of sap
            to cool and clear

an ivy bite.
Reverend Stone,
            faith being a genus of need,
            put his mouth to the thing—

Crack willow, its name, the ice on it broke
the top branches down, until it was stripped,
a glassine mass of shards shining fire
in morning's hard light. Whip willow,
a thing being its name. Or torch, to light
the way to bury the dead by the path.
One willow, our willow, grew by the pond.
Grew shaggy; grew down. With leaves
in "finely toothed margins," the book said,
"and furnished with the two small leaf-like
appendages, known as 'stipules,' at their bases."
Its bracts fringed with hair. Its leaves "convolute—
i.e. rolled together in the bud, like
a scroll of paper." These leaves technically
"lanceolate," tapered to a point, fine-
serrated, gray bloom at the underside. . .

—and tasted there of quinine,
bitter remedy
            for malaria. Dried
            for three months in a baking oven

a pound of
willow bark. Applied this
            to fifty more—faith being antidote
            to suffering, in this case

rheumatism—to which
each responded
            with excellent result.
            Thus salicylates, for a century

following, yield an
acid analgesic
            for healing (headache, heartache, shredded
            muscle, sore or torn tendon. . . );

and yield for
Bayer Pharmaceutical, in 1899,
            a formula for "the most popular
            drug in the world."

Find ye what ye need
among its other.
            Other being, by the doctrine of signatures
            set forth by Philippus Aureolus

Theophrastus Bom-
bastus van Hohenheim—a.k.a.
            Paracelsus—c. 1530,
            nature's way of making meaning, counterpoint, and

remedy to each poison, each disease,
each bodily discomfiture. Nature
being God's provident gift of usage.
Thus lungwort, to cure pulmonary stains;
thus gravelwort (urinary stones) and
bloodroot for vomiting; maidenhair fern
to mend baldness. Thus shaking palsy
is overcome by poplar (as quaking
aspen) leaves; and lily of the valley,
writes William Cole, cureth apoplexy
by Signature; for as that disease is
caused by the dropping of humours into
the principal ventricles of the brain:
so the flowers of this Lily hanging
on the plants as if they were drops, are of

wonderful use herein.
—Switch willow, our
            tree, or broom, for the wealth of downfall after
            wind, the implements we might make.

But this time: sleet,
great snow, then
            gale, from which
            our willow shattered downward, ice-

toppled, explosive
over deep drifts, and shone
            for days in the sun to follow.
            One willow.

For our gathering, as
leaves to burn,
            limbs
            to sweep; as holding hands

with our child, to sing there
to a cat buried
            with his ball, a little food,
            and a willow-switch to dig his way out;

as in to amass, under-
stand, stand
            be-
            neath, fold, as

hands, as in harvest,
as a storm will
            gather, or army will, or something wholly
            unforeseen but, now, in-

evitably broken on the white ground
around us, and nothing to do but grieve.
Thus weeping, for the shape of its branches,
the shed leaf, a shudder of things in wind.
Weeping, as the story of our willow,
and something else that grew, root unto root,
beside us, beneath, within, instead.
Suffering being antidote—.
Thus petal of iris, a bruise polstice;
and St. John's wort, writes John Gerard, with oile
the color of blood, remedy for deep wounds.
Once a willow grew beside a fine pond.
Two shadows lived in its shadow. And raised
a child. And watched a ruining storm, which
—we hardly believed our eyes—was a sign
of the life one comes to know as one's own.