Guinea Hen Weed

She smells it in the earth, whenever it rains.
Call it anamu or guine, mal pouri.
I see her boiling the stem with blue vervain
to halt a heavy bleed, to let a baby
go. Or hammering the bark and root
to stew for syphilis, hysteria.
Or dropping flecks of bud around her room
to shoo a duppy. The seeds are travellers

who hook themselves to mongoose, coney rat,
to feathers, to the soles of shoes. But still
I buy a pack at Kingston airport mall—
jade confetti in a see-through sack.
That night I stew the leaves to make a tea—
to see her there, to plant her here with me.