I. Mugwort

A queen of herb. Your leaves please the tongue, heal pain, dye cloths, still more. Their rear skin is silvery, fuzzy, the front is subdued, unlike a petal.

You aren’t seen to me when I wander in the busy city. When I was a child, I saw you sat here and there around the river embankment. I sat on the green weed, slumped down, and gathered your young leaves in spring for a sweet treat. My grandmother cooked rice cake with the grass. Little by little, the grass scent flew from a saucepan, the green juice was a bit bitter, but like a seasoning. At last, the wild grass became a sweet flower on a porcelain plate. A joy of spring blessing, sometimes hearing a bush warbler, a sort of nightingale in April.

In the season, full of pollen, I was a sufferer, and the pollen that attacked me it came from alder, cedar, and cypress, annoying allergy patients on windy days with a birring sound, the pollen and sand soaring, it’s a torture, so my mother, Hildegard von Bingen at the moment, found a pinch of moxa as a mugwort product, fired the moxa at the acupressure point, heated for three minutes, then Ouch! was the sign of end, my hay fever was gone with smoke, the air of vanish, ashes of the grass and sickness wafted over me over mother over grandmother who had been in deep sleep in heaven.

This silk scarf is a handmade gift from my friend. She dyed the silk with spring mugwort. The dying green has ...