Thursday, August 1, 2013

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

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