Scrophularia laevis
Organ Mountain figwort
Allison Layfield
For protection. Under the light of a nearly
full moon, by the darkness in the heart
of the canyon, pluck this pouty protector
in August, find the flower not showy
dull red to greenish brown, fertile stamens
and pour from its lip all that has gathered—dust,
cockroach droppings, any desperate water
not burned away by daylight.
For purification. Find the leaves obtuse,
coarsely and unevenly thin, scarcely if at all
paler beneath, and add them to tea, for figwort
travels through rivers of lymph,
dispelling and dispersing stagnation.
Here in the Organs, ingest its leaves and all
those lost in the desert will shine in the dark.
To cast protection for the future.
Tear the stems, slender, bright, glabrous,
erect, simple and place the weak,
spreading branches between your teeth
while travelling the moist canyons of quartz,
the juniper woodland, then grind the stems and skin of
flowers into paste to paint the forehead of someone
far from home. Then the mountain will provide
as it does for the figwort a great amount of protection
and their body will leave behind the ghosts and
the mountain will not ask
from which direction they come.
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*italicized words found in the New Mexico Rare Plant Council’s taxonomy report (2005) and in the original description of the species done in 1906 by Wooton and Standley.
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Allison Layfield is from northern California, and her poetry has been published in Delirious Hem, New Delta Review, and Lingerpost. She received her MFA from New Mexico State University, and her PhD in 20th and 21st Century American literature from Purdue University. She lives, writes and works in Las Cruces, New Mexico.