The motto said, we put a rainbow in one green pill
a boxed sunrise in a field of grain...
although Father hawked our white cells in a marrow forest.
"Our bones," he said, "were our anatomical fortress,
blood that triggered nature's minefield,
the white army, shock troops
of the immune system
formed at brigade strength."
He spoke of the masculine keystone
and the female salient but
even when pressed he could not say how
the transformation of alfalfa husks
in the sanguine alchemy of vitamin health
became a weapon of nature’s warfare.
On faith we took them each day
at each meal, six
at a time, round green dots,
smaller than minutes
on the kitchen clock
they sank like dregs to the bottom
and waited for rescue.
While I spit them out
he forced them down dry, gagging and proud of his character.
His first customer, who took a health spa week in the Alps,
and who felt like a million dragging on a buck cigar,
remained unconvinced when
Father likened them to an insurance policy...
In a year of store front space
Father tended the counter, and evenings
sold door to door.
eye to eye and toe to toe.
With a human touch the hammered his message home.
The fragile clay of mortal soil
found him selling to the graveyard shift.