Agamenticus
For Nibezun
By Krystina Friedlander
Painting by Lis O’Kelly
We agree to meet at the peak of Agamenticus,
then follow the trail from the summit down
into this old growth forest that shags its slopes.
From two different paths we arrive, meeting at the edge,
the hedgerow, where forest and cleared peak face one another,
yielding a wild abundance, medicine everywhere.
The weather is good today, late spring and warm;
It is the right day, the right time, for this walk.
We have agreed to meet
aware that it has not been easy
Aware that is not easy now.
I begin, a little awkwardly, because
I see a dandelion at my feet.
Dents-de-leon. Lion’s teeth. Pissenlit,
piss in bed, I laugh.
Taraxacum, from the Persian, tarashaquq.
The root draws cool minerals up through layers of soil.
The names pass through history.
For the liver, for the blood;
the yellow is a sign.
There’s a tangle of red raspberry bushes.
You flip the leaves to show the silver underneath.
It tightens, astringes, tones.
Good for the womb.
Speaking of wombs, I say,
I see motherwort growing, another lion,
“Lion-hearted,” for those who need mothering.
Bitter as hell, though. Right? We taste a leaf together
and I tell the story of my daughter’s birth,
taking motherwort when I thought myself lost.
There is St. John’s wort, not yet blooming,
but I share how my people would wear
garlands at midsummer, throwing them
to the water, a fertility rite.
And you reach for the downy fuzz
of staghorn sumac, telling me to touch.
Somehow it’s noon already.
The forest is cool and inviting,
and we can smell the past years’
leaves returning to topsoil,
the damp fecundity of fungi,
the compost feeding the system.
Right away we see that this sea of green
is a living system of individuals within
networks of mutuality; we knew this before,
but it feels right to know it now, to step willingly
into the wild network.
We step into the forest as you tell the story
of your own child’s birth.
Partridge-berry grows along the path,
with her double lobed, red heart.
She helped me to prepare, you say,
she was with me, and I feel you
remembering those weeks
of anticipation.
I dye with these, but would never eat them, I say,
pointing to a cluster of mushrooms.
You reach down and pick wintergreen,
passing me a leaf to chew. Good for pain.
There is a white birch, “maskwamozt!,” “brzoza!”
We say the words at once, and laugh.
We hold the words in our mouths,
becoming quiet, feeling the weight
of unremembered language
and remembering;
before switching back to a language
our great-grandmothers never spoke.
We’ve come to this forest to walk together,
taking two different paths. Quietly, the forest
heaves and grows, wildly intercommunicating,
wildly interdepending, fluent in minerals,
fluent in salts, in water;
a shared language with our bodies.
There’s so much we’d like to say but
here on this lap of granite we pause
to sit, the bearberry spreading below us.
From here we see the mountain’s little sisters
rising like whale fins from the forest.
11/20/19
Krystina Friedlander is a midwife and herbalist living in Lenape territory in Central New Jersey, serving families in Central Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. She loves homeschooling her daughter and telling her stories about Baba Yaga, obsessively knitting, spinning and weaving, and being out in the woods. Her website is www.barakabirth.com and she’s on Instagram @barakabirth.