Issue 13
Sage
Marjorie Carlson Davis
Home
Welcome
Contents
Contact Us
Join Our Mailing List
What's New
Site Map
Site Search
Herbal Wisdom
With her tall, narrow body and frizzy purple-white hair, Betty resembled a blossoming chive plant. All day she'd putter outside, head bobbing above bushy herbs. She exuded a spicy aroma, a blend of crushed sage and bergamot. Neighbors came to her for herbal concoctions -- parsley for arthritis, sage tea for headaches -- and lingered in the garden to soak up her knowledge. Impotent? Inhale jasmine, she told them. Hot flashes? Take black cohosh.
Yet these same people stood in the street and shook their heads at her wild, weedy yard. An eyesore, a blight on the neighborhood, they said, and voted for strict landscape ordinances.
The day men mowed down her gardens Betty stood on her porch. How can you do this? she asked, hands fluttering like tiny leaves. When the last plant fell, Betty visibly wilted. She disappeared into her house, the door snapping behind her.
The neighborhood looked oh so much neater -- short grass crisscrossed with lawn mower lines, flowers in military queues, bushes trimmed in rigid shapes. Betty's yard was a desolate blanket of green. Yes, clean and tidy, the neighbors agreed. But sometimes they allowed themselves to miss that heady, herbal scent, that headache curing sage.
~Marjorie Carlson Davis
Marjorie Carlson Davis lives in rural Illinois. Her work has appeared most recently in Stories from Where We Live: The Great Lakes (Milkweed Press, 2003). Website. Email.
© 2003 by Marjorie Carlson Davis. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.