Catalog of Cures in Ordinary Time

There’s a prayer for every malady
     in ordinary time if you know where to look,
said my father, and though he kept his daily
     devotions and entreaties to himself, I found
a psalter in his pocket the final summer
     he rescued clusters of sungold tomatoes
from early blight. Like little sunsets, like a song
     of ascents, I wish to remember my father.
Not my recollections of blossoms and blossom-end rot
     which are fading evenly, but the whole
inventory of days when my father picked
     early corn in late August, milk stage of kernels,
brown silks for corn silk tea that was meant to be
     anti-inflammatory. In the end,
it was fast and metastatic, and I’ve learned
     that what grows from seed to seed is a lesson

in acceptance. What was fallow ground, for instance,
     has been broken up. Here lie the barkflies and the dead moths
and aphids, repelled by my summer savory—
     beloved of honeybees, peppery
and a good remedy for too salty
     recipes—also sweet costmary, green
and silvery (but remember to use
     sparingly). Lemon balm, in remembrance of my father,
is the hardiest and longest-lived of them
     all, growing back each year with a resolve
that is rigid and almost a respite
     from the grief that is lodged in the split between my heartbeats.

This article appears in June 2025.