Written by Debra Elramey
He sits on a bench as passersby scoot in and out
the hospital entrance. You could no more miss him
than a chirping bluebird perched on your windowsill,
the dashing Indian, Native American, modern shaman
sent from heaven to heal the ailing here and now.
Sent to cure my brother in critical condition, this herbal
evangelist who could have been cast as savior in a
Jesus film set in the present: hair the shade of carob
draping clean white shirt. Jeans and Birkenstocks.
A sacred man who smokes and plays mandolin.
My brother is released from the doctors and free to return
to his home in the backwoods where a hundred arrowheads
have been unearthed from my father’s fields through the years.
The shaman shows up one night with his gift of folk songs.
From his hip pocket he pulls out a list of herbal alternatives
to the chemical route. For heart and circulatory health:
Green tea, Indian hemp, lecithin, persimmon. Tonics
for the immune system: bee pollen, cat’s claw, rosemary
ginseng. But too radical a departure from the medical
scene for my brother, who neglects his health and whose
limbs disappear one day like my neighbor’s oak.
I sit and peer outside my window as branch by branch
the tree is hacked away, and remember how strong
my brother had been before he lost his will to live
and wonder whatever became of the medicine man.
Text © Debra Elramey
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