A Modern Herbal

When I dream 

I am six years old,

sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen

the earthy aroma 

hints at organisms living within the brick walls.

Botanical bouquets, oils and salves line the shelves,

alongside Mrs. Grieve’s two-volume A Modern Herbal*

(Anise for indigestion, Borage for arthritis, 

Calendula for insect bites).

My grandmother is always moving, like a swamp cat,

her brambly blackberry voice

tells me we swallow eight spiders a year while sleeping.

She butchers a chicken still quivering,

feathers coat the copper sink

while Coonhound bolts from the root cellar

and swallows the guts.

Her wooden table, the colour of a rosy-brown cuttlefish, 

where we gathered to eat, birth babies, cleanse the dead,

where I learned to gauge my grandmother’s mood by the wind:

mournful, musical, agitated or composed. 

This dream

a steady bright yellow flame.

*A Modern Herbal by Mrs. M. Grieve was first published in England in 1931.