An Herbarium of the Honorable - Anja Notanja Sieger and Aunt Dilly

Working on Natural History for the third summer has reinforced our consciousness of the aesthetic of the blue veiling we create, but also the history of each botanical specimen we place over our portraits. Grown now for ornamental beauty, the plants we use were once understood as a language in mythology, culinary, healing, and magical arts. 

We began researching the lore, legend and traditional uses of these plants, but could not find a way to carry this information into the 21st century in a satisfactory way. But, as luck would have it, while attending the Creative Capital Seminar sponsored by Milwaukee Artists Resource Network in June, B met Milwaukee poet,  Anja Notanja Sieger.  

Anja took all our research and wove it into a captivating excursion into the matriarchal botanical world:

Mom Has Only One Great-Great Grandma Dilla Memory

Of riding with her in the backseat- 

Great-Grandma Dilla 

                     who quakes 

afraid of the speed.  

50 miles per hour is not

the clop-clop of hooves on dirt.

There is no cud chewing 

behind the power of this engine

She cannot digest the anise 

of her own thoughts beyond

twisting limbs and flying glass

bruises, fractures, breaks, disfigurement 

and the inevitable at its most gristly.

There's an envelope inside her purse

containing "meetin' seeds."

She would offer this child some to chew,

but her great-granddaughter would choke- 

were a deer to leap into the road 

and break pedals stomped.

This child hangs onto a map.

named Rand-McNally, 

and her Great-Grandma Dilly lives 

under her finger.

She will not lift her finger 

it's stuck on Chisholm,

the Minnesota town reels out the window 

her eyes reaching for the sturdy horizon

just like her great-ancestress 

she suffers 

                   motion sickness

Only Grandma Dilla 

doesn't have a name for it.

She has no map to hold, 

She knows of  Mercury, 

its position and plants 

offer a cure for colick 

more reliable than a lullaby.  

The woman could use some aneton oil now

to rub on her temples, brow and sternum.

She would like the car to pull over

so that she could get out and lower herself

into a basin of steaming dill seed tea.

Something to loosen her knuckle knots

something to uncurl her toes

a pickle bath for her wrinkled skin.

They could serve her vertiginous head

with a medley of cruciferous vegetables,

in a tangy grandmother soup.

Grandma Dilla's can't detect any aroma

of dill flower in factory brand relishes

and she's known Mercury's pull 

on germinating crops,

breast lactation 

and even the caterpillars 

of swallowtail butterflies.

When the ride is finally over,

Grandma Dilla boosts herself out 

still twisting her ring and swearing

on the "Hair of a Hamadryas Baboon!"

Then my Great-great-grandma passed through 

the gate to the garden to sit down 

in her dilly weed thicket

and sigh.

© Anja Notanja Sieger 2013