Lisa Lynn
It is perfectly natural to have deer bones
on the cellar shelves next to the canned tomatoes
and apricots.
You remember that morning before spring when the winds and the waters
have washed away the detritus of last year’s leaves
allowing the rounds of bones to surface in their whiteness.
And there are the bones themselves you dug up silently and with awe
that morning in the deep gully when the white cat
accompanied you more than a mile’s walk,
wending in her circuitous cat way
with no adherence to linearity or paths,
more a winding of wiles and will
and moreover that ineffable cat mystery
that evaporated habit and led you
to those bones,
the bones you carried back clasped to your heart,
as though they were the relics
of your ancestors,
which perhaps they are.
And yes, it is also primordially ordinary
to steep foraged medicinals —
mugwort
nettle
colstfoot
comfrey
in cider vinegar from new moon
to second full moon
for minerals easily available in deep winter
suspended as they are and amenable to absorption.
It’s also quite fine to ponder and shudder
when a healing decoction doesn’t work
and to chalk it up to the larger inexplicable Alchemy
as the reason for ongoing pain in the shankles
or the slight flop in the top of your hat
that will not stand up for any iron.
And for the record,
let’s say you follow all these impulses
and their primitive machinations
please know
that it’s still really okay
to fall in love in the usual way
and to have your heart broken quite conventionally
and to seem as though you just want an ordinary life.
Go to the cellar.
Pet the bones.
Bring up some apricots.
***
Lisa L. Lynn, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice and writes in the interstices as a necessary existential connection to the Muse in the midst of contemporary darkness.