My mom sits at the dinner table and cracks open 
a Common Milkweed pod (from the genus Asclepias, 

meaning “to cut open” in Greek, named for the god 
of medicine) she’d brought back from Michigan,

her thumbs splitting the cone like an oyster and 
separating the skeins of floss from the hard black

seeds, which she will plant in the garden. The floss
floats through the air and lands in my dad’s coffee. 

Asclepius wields a caduceus with a snake, what 
an odd animal to symbolize healing. Perhaps 

not. I’ve learned the most about my mom when
we struggle to free the garter snakes caught in 

the plastic weed barrier. Mom, jumpy, yelping 
when the snake twists after I’ve nicked its scales.

My dad steps away from the table, which has 
become a cumulus cloud. From the kitchen window 

we watch mom collect the white fluff, carry it out
to the back porch and release it like a closing prayer

over the ferns and hairy vervain which recreate Eden 
in our backyard. There is no reason to do this, but 

there is no reason to do anything poetic. This stuff
used to fill WWII jackets, can float a rock when spun

into yarn. When cells are damaged Milkweed plants
releases cardenolides which also protect Monarchs. A 

chain of creatures helping each other, imagine that.
Mom heals this plot of Indiana because there is no 

one else she can help, all of us too broken and 
vicious, imagine that. She wears her gardening 

gloves to hold the snake in place, still flinches under 
it’s anger at its own existence and the part she has 

Played. Maybe she’s worried at this anger, this irritation
at her fear despite her effort. Despite her twenty-five 

years of healing. Yet despite this, my unrest under 
her careful grip, my obsession with venom and my

reckless hissing at her fear, she holds until the snake 
has been cut free and is off bitter into the world.