Dragon and Mountain

I asked my dear friend Phill, a digital artist, to create for me a sacred image to signify, formally, a role I’d been given. A man overseas invited me into a tradition of dragon magic with communities in various countries – an honour. I loved and admired him; I already worked with dragons; I agreed. Each locality was designated a ‘tor,’ mine named for the town where I live. 

I requested a design suggesting our local mountain: viewed from my location, ia high, pointed summit on the left, then two humps descending to the right. I saw it shaping the word ‘Am,’ for Being. Asked what colours I'd like, I chose green and purple, the colours of the Women’s Movement. (I've since learned that there is a sacred Indgenous women's site on the mountain .)

Phill put this image inside a sphere. He added – unasked, but inspired – a seven-pointed star in the background, symbol of the Faery realm, in a form that could be viewed as loosely woven fabric or gently radiating light.

The magical man’s dragon tradition grew warlike. It was metaphorical; even so, I rejected that identification. The dragons I knew were benevolent. I couldn’t, in conscience, establish a branch of his tradition here. I resigned. He saw this as betrayal. 

He had overcome many challenges, requiring a warrior’s mind-set, so I didn’t seek to change him but I wouldn’t join him. He cut off all communication with me.

I decided to keep the symbol I'd designed, reclaiming it as a statement of my own being, my own connection to the mountain (which I have felt from the first encounter).

The artist, my soul-brother, died: cancer, sudden and quick. From his hospital bed, at my request, witnessed by his family, he gave me permission to save all his digital art to do whatever I like with. I've no particular plans; I just didn’t want it lost if his website lapsed. 

Later, it happened that I was one of a group of white Australians given by a local Indigenous elder the freedom of this land, Githabul land. It includes the mountain.

sometimes at twilight

I look up at the mountain

and glimpse a dragon –

its shadowy back a swathe

along the darkening ridge

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #120: A Touch of Formality

Home

Home

The sky, the sunlight, 

the water, the green earth — 

I live and move and breathe 

in the midst of this natural wonder

called the Mt Warning Caldera:

vast, ancient, fertile bowl

ringed by mountains and ocean,

surrounding that great central peak

where the light of dawn first touches 

my island continent: Australia.

I grew on a tinier island, southernmost

point of this land, almost a secret,

where lakes and prehistoric forests,

mountains and pristine coast,

still require trek or pilgrimage

from the most determined traveller

to arrive in unpeopled wilderness, struck 

by such magnificence it dwarfs you;

you want to bow down (perhaps you do)

thanking God, or Fate, or the Universe.

Later I crossed the Strait, found at length 

a treed suburb in a city by the sea, 

good place for raising children,

messing about in boats and libraries —

a base from which to travel

up the leafy, happy east coast, 

north to the steamy tropics, west

to a wilder ocean, or into the central desert
(full of flowers and birds that year, after rain)
with its one giant monolith.

This is a wondrous country! The first people

on earth lived here (don’t believe 
those tales that we began in Africa; here 

the Original People know better: I’ve studied 

their lore of the stars) and they still live 

here today — along with many others, 

arriving for conquest maybe; staying for love

of green earth or wide brown land (it's A Big

Country) of sparkling water, abundant sunshine,

and a quality of light seen only in this sky.


Written in response to April 2020, Day 24: Natural Wonders, at 'imaginary garden with real toads'. I intended to write only about the area where I now live, but couldn't stop until I'd included the whole country! I thought of calling it 'Sacred Land' – but aren't they all? The Earth is sacred; I wish that was more widely understood.


Notes: 

A Big Country was a much-loved, long-running (1968-1991) TV documentary exploring Australian rural life.

Artists (and others) have remarked on the wonderful quality of the light in Australia, even in winter, found nowhere else.

Stella Whieldon on Origine' Cultural Star Lore.

Image: Fair Use.

The Magic Mountain

The Magic Mountain

I live in sight of an old volcano, 

not snow-capped but covered in trees.

I live in the cauldron it carved long ago,

coughing up lava like gobs of phlegm.

From here we see daily the handsome profile 

of an ancient warrior outlined in the peaks.

Some, though, insist it’s really the shape 

of a brush turkey: head down, tail up. I see that too.

For 200 years or more we called it Mt Warning.

Then we restored the true name, Wollumbin.

Or did we? It remains in dispute; other names 

claimed by some of the Original people.

Jack might go up this hill, but not Jill. Women,

we are told, are forbidden to scale these heights.

Some women, nearing the top, have seen the warrior 

appear with his spear to ward them off the summit.

But I love to climb the lower slopes a short way up,

placing myself in the middle of the ancient trees.

This mountain is said to be full of crystals. Often

they are found on nearby paths, or in streams.

Those who live here know, this whole Caldera

surrounding the mountain calls people here. 

Some it spits out! (And some stay, but feel afraid.) 

Called and made welcome 25 years ago, I remain.

For day 10 of Poems in April at 'imaginary garden with real toads', we are asked to grab the nearest book, open at random and read the first sentence on that page. Then there are various things we might do with those words. I chose the option of using all of them in a poem.

The book was Real Face, by Ken Smeaton, which I had the honour of publishing under the Abalone Press imprint – OMG, 32 years ago. It was nearby because I've recently been proof-reading his forthcoming 'new and selected' and was referring back to some of the original texts, including this one. The poem I opened to was 'Collarenebri Hospital', and the first sentence reads (slashes indicating line breaks on the page):

Handsome Jack / in the middle of the ward / an old snow-capped volcano / coughing up 200 years of phlegm.

Of Country

Poetry Month, day 20

The prompt today at "imaginary garden with real toads" is Say the Names of the Places You Love.

Of Country

Murwillumbah in the Northern Rivers,

under the mountain known as Wollumbin

(which Captain Cook christened Mt Warning)

is a home which I came to late in life.

Seers, oracles and guides all told me

I belonged far north of where I was. Then Fate 

and the Universe took a hand, offering a house 

for rent, all the way up here, in Pumpenbil

out past Tyalgum, at the end of a dirt road

nearly to the top of the hill. The name our landlady

gave that place was Djieriong, a Bundjalung word

meaning "Freedom of the Heart". 

And we found that here. Though we didn't

find any of the "many possums" we were told that

Murwillumbah was the "place of" – and as for

the mountain, there are those who say

white settlers misunderstood. That name,

they say, belonged originally to a different mountain

further along the range. Be that as it may, 

it seems to me they are all good names 

to use in this rainforest land, this sacred earth,

this mountain-ringed, vast valley of many rivers,

this huge Caldera around its crystal-full peak.

Do I say this is now my place? That idea of land 

as possession, as property, is a notion brought 

by invaders. The original people say, I believe, 

that they belong to the land; custodians, caretakers. 

And more than that, deeper than that: the land that bore them 

is their spirit home. They are always connected 

to that country. One time, for reasons, I and some others 

were given the freedom of this land here, for life, 

by one who could – a Githabul elder 

from out Kyogle way. So yes, I do belong.

Note: Shae Brown, the above-mentioned "landlady" became a very dear friend as well. She comments elsewhere, on this poem:
"So beautiful Rosemary, it is always a delicate balance being non-Indigenous and being sensitive to knowledge as well. I connected with a Bundjalung Elder when I first moved here, to introduce myself and to respectfully ask permission to be here, which he gave...and then gave me the word to represent my relationship with Country."