Sourcing
 

Oh I don't know.
Sometimes I wonder, not just simple things, like who my mother was,
where my father came into all this; but other things as well.

Who I am. There's an example for you. One would think that by my age one
would have some idea about that. But it's not so simple. Not simple at
all. Even when I was young, sometimes, I would have two separate
memories about something that could, after all, have happened only once.

It's as if, sometimes I were more than one woman, more than one history.
It's the task to become one, so that one can be the many all over again.

More than one question, more than one beginning. More than one emotion,
thought, way of life. Where did it begin, and why can't it all, all of
it be simple?

After all, is there any child who is not alone, really? See those
children playing, just out of reach of the firelight, thinking we don't
see them. They're together, I suppose, but each so engrossed in their
own world that the others are merely shadows of company. Should one of
them lean over and touch the other's making they will fight as frankly
and openly as any other small animals will. So. I can't complain. I
don't want to. It was peaceful in the alone time; sweet, gentle, and
open.

Besides, what child does not hear voices? Voices that are and are not,
close and far. "The tiger made me do it", said the boy. "The man told 
me"; but the boy was alone in a silent and secluded room. So then, the
vast peopled universe, inside and outside. And inside is company and
kindness, and outside is aloneness, however filled with activity and
purpose; and seeming, seeming connection.

So, its as if there were two mothers, and two journeys; two of nearly
everything. Not all of them opposing, not all of them in pain, not all
of them beginning or ending. Looking now at the embers of this fire, I
find myself faltering. You want a plain tale.

No tale is plain. Not if you are to be brought, with me, inside it. Not
if you are to share the child's world where the tiger speaks and the
taniwha is one's uncle.

Perhaps it all began with the grieving of Rangi. I can't say. But it was
a world in which, it seems, all the grownups were men. Male, anyway. Tu
the sociopath, who saw no wrong in killing his own life support, Tomoana
and his rage against the earth, the sea, formed of the tears of Rangi,
salt and bitter to embrace his wife, the earth. Who was it, in the end
could not face her, Mother of us, all; and rolled her over in the sea?
How was it that, even then, even so, even after that, we heard her
voice?

And did I hear her? Was I even there, and born? What was that lovely
shadow of the sand smoothed cave who seemed to murmur, rocking me against
the sound of rain upon the surf? And whose hands guided mine, to plant
and dig, and mould and reap and brew the beer you're drinking now?

I do not know. I seem to hear a voice, gentle and dappled as the soft
sun on a bent fern, whispering Mahuea, Mahuea, Mahuika shadow of the
one. A shade, a gentleness, a passion burning in the marrow of the skull
Mahuea, Aunty Mahuika; but I do not know.

Ask me to tell you and I'll say she lifted me, and held me to her
breast, and stroked my hair and called me lovely names. Ask me to tell
you how she looked and how she smelled, and all I remember is loam under
the bank and the feel of a rivulet over the clay in the bush.

Perhaps because she was the womb and cradle of us all, those gods strode
the earth and sky and sea. Nurtured by her, they stayed with her, and
longed for her loveliness and sought some new substance of her form.

Embraced by the sea, the silken sea,
warmed by the tickling sun soft as her loins
they longed and yearned while she
lay mending.
Mending and healing

Did I then live? whether my memory's song,
or my mother's singing mind
entrances yet,
she was most gentle in the forest,
deep and dazzling in the embracing dark

we walked long silences beneath broad spinning stars
and by the dripping trees would sometimes pause,
and read a footfall or a twig,
and trace the kiwi scuttle through the night.

Out of myself spun taniwha of love and shifting light
and an odd beatitude, like peace.
I crawled in sand, and tumbled laughing on warm
broken rock, searched with my soul
 spun threads in fire
swam within currents solid in the forest pool,
 lay on the breast of earth
 and heard her pulse, deep drifting under me,
 ran with a leaf, a twig, a masterpiece of shell,
 paying her quietude with trusting love -

and still, now you ask me, I can't tell,
to whom I took these treasures, shared my hurts,
what was that knee into whose bourne I fell.

She has become a shadow, touching me, a pause
unbreakable who holds me
 while a pigeon,
comfortable and fat upon a branch
struts leisurely

so do we all twist memories; make one thing fit
another from a different tale; the fire of hearth
the hurt of burn, the quiet indifference 

the small thought flickers in the shades of dusk.

so do I look back
 longing for a smell I can't quite
trust, a sense of smooth hands soothing my small
limbs, a breast to nurture till I almost

leave the fire and turn, next door
       a man of dignity. 
 He'll tell me, better than a book,
who gave me birth, and who my childhood owed for strength,
and what my origins and where my feet were placed.

"Tell me", I'll say, "my father's name,
"expound for me
       my very self,
       my life blood
       and my hearth.

"who was her lover, lovely Mahuea's spouse?
"Who kindled in her passion, seed, and birth?
"Whence did she come, and who was formed
"out of the liquid fire of earth?"

But I am afraid. Barely to know my story
but to know it is my own, without
hearing and changing. Changing and hearing
sorting my own dreams, without footnotes
and codicils and half remembered comments
from another's words.

I could lie in the wave, in the sand,
feeling the surf's foam pummel me;
trance the paths back through the half remembered
bush and be young again, who, in my mind
have never yet seen age; speak to an uncle,
ask if they saw her too, or only heard her breath

ask if the shade of Papa took a form
and walked and breathed like us,
and know myself a girl
the earth born maid,
and know,

       I fear to know
        myself,

Alone.