"The Healing Garden, Green Teatherapy, Enlightening Body Mist"

As though on a colored jar of Dodge City elixir,
ornate speech of the day blustering on a stage
as yet unshared with science,
the words spoke to a young woman from a young country,
Boston teapot, Civil War shotgun & Philadelphia petticoats
still intact despite the journey west.

With natural extracts of asian sandalwood, peony petals, and everlasting . . .

Immigrant woman, cradling girlhood on the frontier,
part New York histrionics, part East Europe refinement,
traded mercantilism for infinite prairie
& the scent of leather whip & saddle weary men
nipping at her ankles.

"No steamed artichokes & chocolate cheer, my dear,"
she muttered, hungry, choking upon Kansas dust.
Illusory enactments, that's all,
crude knifings of narrative spun on wagon trails
& prairie roasted buffalo meat

She saw Cherokee nude but for warpaint
in high ground encampments,
& her white skin whitened.
How she would tremble
in their knowledgeable hands.

Such stirrings, their singularly Western cadence,
contested nothing,
confirmed everything she imagined,
were what would become
recombinant images in the healing garden.

Sometimes eyes must be held in a skull,
pressed there by green teatherapy
& the enlightenment of body mist
everlasting,
carried from the Eastern motherland.

With natural extracts of asian sandalwood, peony petals, and everlasting . . .

(c) dark | 31 March 1998