The Dreamtime

When one lives long enough, and in the same general place, the dreaming time becomes real.  A Ngalyod (Rainbow Snake) planted red water lilies in a billabong; they grow there to this day.  In fact, the Ngalyod still dwells at the bottom of the billabong, and his presence keeps the lilies red.  Another Snake seduced four sisters at their campsite.  The sisters still dwell in that spot, as trees.

     So, too, for me, the landscape of the neighborhood overflows with places that can only be fully experienced anagogically, as shrines and sanctums where spirits dwell.  The circle of grass where we sat, and Libby took my hand, still holds her form.  There is a gully where my children danced; the pressure of their feet making contact with the earth causes the gully to deepen each summer.  And I, myself, the boy who studied fossils in the rock of a wall, now dwell in that stone, young among the tiny Paul Klee spirals, cones, and wheels of the Ordovician Period.