Shanta Acharya
Dreamers
(For Mark Abley with acknowledgment to Spoken Here)
Dreamtime, dawn of consciousness
when land was bequeathed to them
by ancestral beings born from a featureless clod
over which they breathed, moved, created its qualities;
a creek here, a rock formation there,
was not something that happened once, long ago:
It happens everyday in our realm in ordinary time . . .
Before leaving the earth, they gifted
their inheritors the fabric of their lives –
clans, tools, weapons, language –
theirs were the words that came before all else,
each name a living present from the ancient past.
Their words travel through time and space,
crossing boundaries; a tale begun
by one clan beside a seashore
is finished by another far inland
in a different language, their stories maps
naming and shaping the landscape, the culture;
word pictures, earth pictures becoming One.
Dreamtime beings defined the world,
populating it with dreamers.
They did not try to escape when invaded. How could
they abandon their birthplace or inhabit someone else’s –
the world that lent meaning to their lives, gave them
words that descended from the Dreaming?
Page(s) 140
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