is one of four tape letters in the series Belly full of blind highways / KAAP and Dear, / 2023
Lyric / Wendy Morris / 2022
Dear Savin, Roughe Herb, wild wort
We call to you from the Book of Blessings-in-Disguise,
from the Compendium of Female Pills and Other Poisons,
from the Cook-book of Putrid Fumigations,
the Chronicles of Frightening Brews,
from the Almanac of Awkward Questions,
the Encyclopedia of Obstructions
and the Digest of Digressions
We call to you from these Anthologies of Amnesia,
these Volumes of Forgetting,
this Library of Books Withdrawn,
we call to you from Time Immemorial
Your smell precedes you, Roughe Herb wild wort,
The stink of stale urine, a whip of leaves,
low growing, a pungent prickly plant
You know us, knew us, no longer know us
We knew you, no longer know you.
Yet, ancient is our association
Once we were openly connected
Wild Weed and Wandering Womb
Savin, they wrote, abortifacient of choice
excites menstruation, brings down the terms
helps the fits of the womb
promotes speedy delivery to pregnant women and draws away
the afterbirth
Cato knew about Savin.
Likewise did Dioscorides, that SAVIN drunk with wine will drive
out the Partum, the offspring, the thing of the womb.
And he was consulted for two thousand years.
Galen of Pergamon was concise.
Savin aborts.
The ancients make it quite clear.
She’s gone to the garden gay
To pluck of the savin tree
But for all that she could do or say
The babe it would not die
The aged nurse of Britomarts she gathered REW and SAVINE
She poured them in an earthen pot with CALAMINT and DILL
And to the brim with COLTWEED and CAMPHORA she did fill
That potent brew caused many drops of milk and blood to spill
Bastard-killer,
and the Savin bushes in public gardens were fenced off
They criminalized you as a Fourth Schedule of Poison.
They cursed you as a diabolical drink.
Plant of the Damned.
Kindermord.
Linnaeus, that misogynist Lutheran, said that women who use
savin are whores. And though they think their sin is secret, God
sees it.
Cover-shame
Lucky Herb was what women called you. Find the savin bush
and you have the house of the midwife.
Maidy-bush, midwife’s herb. Tree of Life.
Women knew where you grew. Invisible hands still plucked at
your branches. But discretion had become desirable.
Whispers of wisdom. Quiet exchanges.
Roughe herb, wild wort
Accompany us once again
Wanton wenches, wayward wives, wandering wombs
We still have common cause