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This post is part of a series on trees. Submit your tree features to snakeoilcure[at]gmail[dot]com.
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Jessica Brophy is an islophile and nissologist working as a small-town newspaper reporter. Her other contributions to Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.
Posted by Dr. Hurley on January 17, 2012
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/winter-fruit-jess-brophy/
soft
like angels dropping grace
on the brown crust
of earth
it falls
in silence and calm, covering
the dead of autumn with
a shroud
of watery pearls, blooms
frozen at their birth
and released as they die
lying
on the soil
that is hard and yet unaware
of the offspring it will
bear
it falls
white and deaf as I watch and wish
I was young again
snowballing
sledding through
whiteness, but my old bones would
break like boughs under the
snow’s weight
Posted by Dr. Hurley on March 28, 2011
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/winter/
Rilke wrote a beautiful poem about a blue hydrangea, fading from summer’s bright blue to fall’s brown brittleness. He hints at sadness and death and decay and destruction. What this poem puts me in mind of, however, is that right now we need its reverse to start happening – the dead and decayed should come back to life and the brown brittleness should start to suck energy and color back out of the soil. In short, it should be spring soon.
Posted by EEJ on March 7, 2011
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/blaue-hortensie/
A warming tonic for cold Winter nights spent in with your feet propped up.
Stir together maple syrup and orange bitters, add a large ice cube (as large as possible), pour port and bourbon over the ice.
Posted by EEJ on March 6, 2011
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/dr-hurleys-tonic-no-002/
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