When you happened to sprain your wrist or ankle
you made your way to the local shaman,
if ‘shaman’ is the word for Larry Toal,
who was so at ease with himself, so tranquil,

a cloud of smoke would graze his thatch
like the cow in the cautionary tale,
while a tether of smoke curled down his chimney
and the end of the tether was attached

to Larry’s ankle or to Larry’s wrist.
He would conjure up a poultice of soot and spit
and flannel-talk, how he had a soft spot

for the mud of Flanders,
how he came within that of the cure for glanders
from a Suffolkman who suddenly went west.