Healing Woman She sniffs moist earth,
wriggling spicy grass between toes.
Her body is a gazelle.
She moves with grace,
a painter's fluid lines
connecting one point to the next.
Her ear is alert,
whispered wind hung in her thoughts. Once it comes she lets it go,
easy as dropping sand.
She has no time to cling.
She lifts an eye,
twice to the trees,
once to sky,
back to yellow earth.
She knows the grasses,
vines,
each subtle scented flower
calling to her like an old lover.
She knows all of these.
She is a sage and a healer. She takes from the earth
only what she needs.
Her spine is attentive
—not because of motherland
who willingly yields to the grateful;
her care takes other shapes.
There are spies in the woods,
men who suck wells dry
and trample on new shoots.
These men have pillaged the earth
and hate all life forms,
envying in their buried hearts
the power
of the gentle. Her quick fingers pluck,
press into her pouch rootless plants
for the lame of step,
bruised of skin,
sad of soul.
She treads lightly:
her mantra, thanks to the earth
for its gift of knowledge
to the patient and tender. In the eighteenth century,
hundreds of healers still burned at the stake
for practicing their art,
also known as witchcraft. —Nina Silver The beginning of this poem appeared way back in NMR 4:4. I recently learned that it was incomplete. This is the complete and updated version. ?It may take us a while, but we do get there. | 
