Pre Sageing
 
 

Sometimes, there's a sort of reluctance. As if - I don't know - almost
you want someone else to write this thing. Something that lay in wait
for you. As if this story were a lover one hadn't had yet. A feeling
that one might be utterly expanded and wonderful, but that one is somehow
too small to entertain the guest. Shyness. I too can read a mirror. Achingly.

But then, when someone else does tell the story, one mumbles. After all,
one could have done it better. Might have. Could at least improve on
what they've done.

Sometimes of course, they tell a different story. Something I would never
have thought of. Tell it so well its like. Well. Like company in the
dark. What was it that boy said of the green man, mask dancing in the
tree instead of pinned and plastered to the niche in the wall by the
grove? Like a friend when there is no friend there?

Perhaps it was that. The flickering in the tree as if there were someone
standing there. No. Someone. Like Tane or Sandalphon or some essential
presence alien and strong and totally indifferent. And not standing
either, flickering like a half word dance in the consciousness. A story
hinted at. I felt the words then. Good words. Satisfying. Nothing arty
about them. Bread and salt comfortable. All gone now into silence.
 

Anyway, I decided then that the problem with this tale was my
persistence. Trying to keep it all outside me. Third person and laconic,
As if it didn't matter. Any meaning is implied. No stated connection.
But its not like that at all.

It is my story, though it contains the gods and heroes and maidens of
old; not to mention wonders in the bush and hill fort. Therein lies
another agony.  How shall I who sit at your own hearth nurturing my
herbs claim equity with gods? Tell of an angel or a sage, and, at the 
same time, stop the mixture sticking to the pot? The greeks, I've heard,
believed an actor became the vessel of the God for whom the poet spoke.
That's why the mask. The face betrayed theophany. The actor breaks
apart.

But not all Gods are mighty in that way. The power of some lies in their
heartbreaking openness. Life in a biscuit, or a pot of herbs.

What would you think, I wonder, if from this pot should flow a dream, misty
and fragrant with our beginnings?  Do you ever ask yourself, what's
wrong? Why does it feel so out of sorts and queer? Perhaps if we grew 
here, we should find ourselves at home. Instead we worry. What if
tomorrow there might be no herbs? Wonder who our mother is yet hear her 
speak? Look to the moon to feel in tune with earth?

I am so old now I forget the names, even where I half heard them in the
past. Fail to remember my sons names - or their fathers'. But that's no
surprise.  I never knew my own father's name. Not till the tale was half
way told.  Knew only my mother's murmuring 'love' as she sighed and
turned in the dark. She was, perhaps, dreaming a memory, or wandering in
love's company in her sleep. I lay upon her, brown limbed and water fat,
kicking my heels in her company who bore me, mother naked in the grassy
steam upon the shaking flanks of mother earth.

Perhaps you think you know the name, the ferns, the heavy smell of
vapour crystal, steam. Perhaps you're right. Or perhaps all this
happened when the whole earth trembled; fire. earth. water. air.
soul thunder and unformed, making a dreamtime, or presaging a story that
was even then, the long ago.