Last year yarrow taught me about feathery soft boundaries, as I became a student of love, going right back to the beginning. I had so much to learn, but I knew in my heart there was a way to love somebody without losing yourself. I recently used the yarrow gathered from my old village to nurse my husband through the flu as I myself was needing nursing, but his need was greater.
Duty is not as delicious as other words I may use to describe my life, but it has its own kind of beauty. Without our duty to each other, there would be no family, no relationship, and our obligations weave us together to keep us all protected and cherished. We become a mycelial network, where love is distributed as the vital nutrient.
The village where the plant grew was the same place my seed self had been planted in the soil and nurtured by mountains and waterfalls. I was heartsore to leave but the brave yarrow at the gates of my new home welcomed me and reminded me the earth is my true home wherever I am. This year she spoke to me through a dream, because for me so often love has led to public humiliation, and yarrow is the plant of courage. A soldier’s plant for the wounded warrior of the heart.
In summer you’ll often see the poor shorn sides of the road after the council have mowed it, with the plucky little yarrow bobbing in the wind amidst all the devastation. The only survivors. “I’m a survivor” I remarked to my mother the day before I wrote this piece. Those words could have come from yarrow itself.
Also known as “woundwort”, soldiers would use it to staunch their wounds in battle. I can just imagine amidst the bodies, the wounded, their lifeblood soaking into the soil, the worst of what humans can do to each other, yarrow springing up feathery and fearless as always.
There were once three bright souls in the ether and one wanted to learn about love. “I want to be broken by love, a martyr for love, I want to feel my human heart break into a million pieces. Then I want to crawl and drag myself back to the battlelines again.” The second soul said, “I can do this for you, for I have chosen to cover my bright soul in a cloak of darkness and be the aggravator and punisher in the world of duality. I will set the stage.” The third soul said to the first one “You’ll break for me, I choose you both, it is agreed.”
When they leave their human bodies and meet again, it will be like actors leaving the stage and going for drinks to celebrate the success of their closing night.
On earth, there was a woman as prickly as a horse-chestnut with all the same sweetness inside. When she felt threatened her body would shake and her spirit would float away to disembodied heights. There was a man who was very patient, for he had a need of the sweetness, wanted to take it home to warm his hearth but in his grounded wisdom knew that precious things take time. The woman was like a wild thing, would lash out with spirit hooves and snapping teeth and he tried to stay very still. Life had not taught him to be afraid. Her eyes were panicked white, her coat gleaming with adrenaline sweat. She only forgot her fear when talking to the plants or when held in the laps of very wise women.
The earth, like human bodies, moves slowly. She could not say when it occurred, only that in the year it took the yarrow to recede and send out its leaves again, the horse-chestnut woman cracked open in the tenderest of hands. On a sunny day she carried the yarrow flowers back to the home of the patient man, who had left for work that morning grinning at her through the window. She now knew that separation and union, like forgetting and remembering, are two halves of the same coin. She remembered her soul’s story and the promises she had made in the ether. A bright soul in a human body made of soft leaves and white flowers.
