My great, great, great grandmother,
in 1800s peasant-village Hungary,
relied on ritual for healing.
She believed in herbs

gathered by moonlight,
in secret salves and teas
passed on from her mother,
and most especially in

candles and incantations.
And they seemed to work
well enough — she lived
into her late eighties,

hardly ever sick. But when
her arthritis started telling
the weather every day,
her grand-daughter,

my grandmother,
brought in at great expense
a young doctor from
the big city. He took

some white pills from
his black bag and said,
three of these a day.
She looked him up and down

and asked him sideways,
now tell me, just how
does that little pill
know where I hurt?

Walking with my son
by a handwritten sign,

"free stuff," with an arrow
pointing down the block.

I lean and croon,
"I'm drawn to free."

He pulls, voice gruff,
"I'm repelled by stuff."

And we keep walking,
light and free.

Laszlo Slomovits, Ann Arbor, Michigan