Feverfew 3, 34 x 51cm, 2015.
archival digital images on Awagami Bizan handmade paper.

 

Feverfew is a herb widely found in old gardens
and listed in the great herbals of history — the dioscorides
materia medica of ce 65 and by legend in the shen nung
pen ts’ao ching of bce 3^rd millennium — for the formidable
potency of its demure daisy-like flowers,
temperature reduction just one of many attributes,
another, the regulation of day-night body rhythms
by its high concentration of the darkness hormone…

 

Feverfew 7, 34 x 51cm, 2015.
archival digital images on Awagami Bizan handmade paper.

 

but across the tram tracks on nicholson the bombodieri
have begun stomping the soil of the furtive mound
and craters of goo pools have opened up
clicking, clacking, as spectators line up for the chortling frolic
stepping one and then one more into the glug
to be sucked deep into the earth’s fecund triangle,
tickety tack, are then spewed out again on mud geysers

 

Feverfew 10, 34 x 51cm, 2015.
archival digital images on Awagami Bizan handmade paper.

 

and from across the night-gardens
of fitzroy the whisper of an echo,
a little bit on the lungs, just a little—        

 

 

Feverfew 1 (detail) 29.7 x 21 cm, 2015,
digital image on Awagami Bizan paper, text-art flyleaf on Awagami Mitsumata

 

My son the frog-prince of fitzroy gardens
is running a temp, the poor mite has been tossing
and turning all night with forehead on fire,
eyes bulged more than usual but mind fuddled less than.
Please, he says,
please c’n I have a little bit of cool?