Milkweed

White, wind-blown messenger,
what have you sent me?

Sickness of the heart does ail,
a balm for which to Aesclepus
I have prayed without reply.

Planted in turbulent Earth,
swamp-dwellers, grown and born in liquid.
White amnion: the seed's womb.

For July's sustaining milk
we cry, from whose tears the
hardness of August does form.

Cotton caul, wind-ripped, is blown
past garbage shores to riparian
anointed land to rebirth.

White, wind-blown messenger,
what have you sent me?

(c) 2011 Michael Mosher