Would that you had

only known what was not

catnip, was not mint!

With clueless individuality

you invaded its company

and now will attend

to your inattention,

will heed this understory plant

who knows where its strength lies:

in histamine, serotonin,

acetylcholine delivered

by the single cells

of its stinging hairs.

The absence of doubt

in its mind is felt by you

as the burning numbness

of an encounter with naturalism

knowledge makes worse.

Soaked or cooked, it soothes

the pain it causes.

You could just do the work.

A nutritional as well

as metaphorical powerhouse,

it kept the northern hermits

alive another day

to flog themselves with it.

Above and belowground parts

differ in pharmacological properties:

identify your ailment

before you approach.

Should the previously indicated

be contraindicated,

all the world’s vitamins A and C,

all the protein and iron in the world

won’t help you.

Where nettle grows,

says local custom, so grows

healing dock, whose leaves,

broadfaced and not very bright,

may initially provide

a cooling sensation,

but there’s less evidence

for its status as a remedy

than there is for the modest virtue

of fooling yourself.

Urtica dioica, sting

of two houses. To learn this

lessens no one’s pain.

It’s as the ancients say:

sufferings are products,

not voids or defects. Comforts

can only lie alongside them.