Obeah Mama Dot

(her remedies)

I

I am knotted in pain.

She measures string

From navel to each nipple.

She kneads into my belly

Driving the devil

Out of my enforced fast.

II

For the fevers to subside,

I must drink the bush

Boiled to a green alluvium,

In one headlock slake;

And return to bounding around,

Side-stepping bushes for days.

III

A head-knock mushrooms

Into a bold, bald,

softened bulb.

Her poultice filled

At the end of a rainbow -

The sun above Kilimanjaro;

The murderous vial drawn,

Till the watery mound

Is a crater in burnt ground.

IV

Our rocking-chair counsellor:

Her words untangling us

from bramble and plimpler notions

Into this sudden miles-clearing.