TRACK TEN, SONG: “YARROW (TRY THIS)”

YARROW (TRY THIS) Jim Novak, 2020

Your health is not-at-all sanguinary
Your ailments are not-at-all imaginary.
Let me make you my concoction, it’s Medicinal…
My teas, salves and ointments, they’re Artisanal …
And the forest around us, the forest is my Apothecary!

I made myself a raft , I went down the Alleganny,
Paddled all the way to southern Indianny
Walked a couple hundred miles to forget my Could’s and Should’s, and I
Made my way here, the Territory Woods, North-west Territory Woods.

I crossed the Detroit River to Ontario
I turned right back around because it scared me so
People there still bowing to a King and a Queen
Which strikes me as sooo last Century, very 18th Century

In my Mid-west familiar neighborhoods
Native people know how Nature’s got the goods
For health-giving plants they’ve truly understood
They collect Yarrow in the Territory Woods, North-west Territory Woods


For Diseases of the body and diseases of the soul
Yarrow’s best to cure them, or else you must endure them

Yarrow dies each winter, returns every spring
Just before its flowers bloom, you pick the goodness … it will bring!

Happiness and laugher, the sweetness that is health
Wise and earnest living, true prosperity and wealth

Yarrow for digestions, yarrow is for aches
Yarrow for congestion, yarrow for the shakes

Yarrow in an ointment, yarrow in a tea
Never disappointment, yarrow attracts the bee

Keep on the straight and narrow, fly true as an arrow,
Ever since the Pharoahs… Folks try Yarrow!


When Achilles was a baby, he was dipped in yarrow tea
Mother gripped him by one heel, his vul-ner-bility,


The Achilles plant is yarrow, in the Family of “Aster”
There’s more than a hundred ways, yarrow makes you better faster

Yarrow for the wounded, yarrow for the child
Yarrow on the battlefield, yarrow growing wild

Yarrow in a bandage, yarrow in a dressing,
Yarrow helps you manage, yarrow is a blessing

Depression, inflammation, sclerosis, ear pain
Ulcers, indigestion, ailments of the brain

Asthma, diarrhea, fever, and the rheu-----
matism, stings, and swellings, bronchitis and ague


I see your health is NOT sanguinary
Your ailments are NOT imaginary.
Let me make you a concoction that’s Medicinal…
My teas, salves and ointments -- they’re Artisanal …
And the forest around us, the forest is my Apothecary
…. the forest is my Apothecary…… the forest is my Apothecary


I hope you won’t take it amiss
I know this stuff smells like piss
I’m your frontier pharm-a-cist, and I insist:
TRY THIS!

As humans, we go for the bliss
Said Saint Hildegard, the mystic- abbess,
Her healing herbs and plants they never missed,
So, TRY THIS!

You’ll get by, I said You’ll get by, (And you might get high)
If you just TRY THIS!