Raft Building
I have been asked to tell my story
as though it is not many stories
as though it is one thing.
They say tell me the place it begins
but I have only the beginning of memory.
I am nearly six
when I first learn
about leaving places
and all the ways
you can take them with you
the first places are the mountain
and the parents I ferry between
forever leaving.
I am six and fifteen when I learn
about wishing I could leave
and all the ways you can
even when you can't
and how sometimes
we carry places with us
even when we try to let them go
even when everyone tries
to make us let them go.
I am nineteen, twenty, twenty-one
when I learn about being locked in places
my body
full of its inescapable weights
and the suicide watch room –
the suicide watch room
where a security guard
watches you try to sleep
through a small square of glass.
I think how can you see
all of the flooded landscapes
I have become
through such a small window
but he is there to watch
not to see.
Many people come to watch
they think this is what I did this for.
I wanted to say
look can’t you see
how I am drowning here
in all these stories.
But we all
have our own stories
about what happens
in a flood.
I was seven when I learned
that a flood can block a road
and a school bus
but not a group of children
who don't mind the wet
and are willing
to work together
to build a raft
for the one
who gets
tired first.
They say tell me the place
the story changed
as though the story is a finished thing
as though it is not forever changing.
The story changes in the
places I learn to build rafts again
small ones at first
little leaf boats with stick masts
origami vessels with names on their sides
a small log canoe
rafts that could be built alone
and floated out across the water
in search of the ones
who know that floods
are part of nature in some places
and this is how to build a sturdy structure
we can all get aboard
but also we can make a raft out of ourselves even
if we link our elbows together
when the water starts rising.
Miriam Barr is an Auckland-based poet with a background in psychology and a long history of collaboration with musicians, visual artists, and other poets. Her work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, text books, on stage, and in art galleries in Aotearoa NZ and abroad. Her collection, Bullet Hole Riddle was published by Steele Roberts Aotearoa in 2014.
