Tansy

Single four foot stalk of tansy (Tanacetum vulgarum) sometimes called “bitter-buttons”—delicate, fern-like, fragrant, “garden escape”, runaway from bygone gardeners’ herbal paddocks, old world flower of new world byways, waste places, unmowed fields, “a conspicuous feature along many a roadside leading to colonial homesteads”—growing now, isolate, near the head of our driveway. Tansy! Blooms July through September, today is August 30^th, a nearby red maple has already turned, and me this past week turning the pages re-reading The Maximus Poems, “Letter 3” the tansy poem I remember so well first coming upon it decades ago lying on my old bed in my old bedroom in suburban New Jersey, the house I grew up in—reading it now again as if for the first time, Tansy! the common name, explains Mrs. Dana, is thought to be a corruption of the Greek word for “immortality”—either because the flowers are so durable or because of its former use for preserving dead bodies— “immortality” which I presume is athanasia oh Tansy! without death—tansy tea, tansy wine, and tansy-scented words, Zeus, it was thought, having abducted Ganymede from the perishing precincts to make him cupbearer to the gods, gave him Tansy! to make him immortal, “Poisonous in large doses,” they say, “but harmless when used sparingly for flavoring”—smalls sips, just a “taste” of immortality—not the whole goblet, not too much, not too fast. . . .  Time is the hangover of eternity.