Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Koorabup: Denmark, The Place of Return

Koorabup Denmark: To Return
Koorabup, some say, is the place of the swan, the maali or kaljak.
Some say Koorabup means the place of return, to where with each winter's gale and the river in flood, rains would strain bleeding brown mud in the torrent's quest to fill the inlet and break the bar to the sea.
And then, that done, soon thereafter, freshwater for a time in spring, at high tide, mixed and melded fresh with salt and fish in shoals and schools of plenty, provided tartj: meat for hungry mouths of the Biboolmin - the people of the paperbarks.
The river still floods and the bar still breaks and paperbarks still line the river banks.
The blackswan moves motionless when the water sits still.
The swan's reflected double means its never alone, and the ancient fish traps remain, they've worn their test of time, echoing reminders of some one's home; some one's attention to tides that flow, that therein provided their reason to return, to sit by their fires with their fish cooking close to their mia's: their huts, and there to sleep, to sing, and weep, there to hear the recriminations ring, to cry, and live their lives till the tides had turned, till the sandbar silted and enclosed once more, the fish, then few, which signalled the Biboolmun return to the forests they new, to their haunts of the yongka grey kangaroo, and to the kwenda, and the wooly-kangaroo rat and the long-tailed karda: goanna and to the forest floor with its stores-a-plenty; red roots and wild potato all dependant on the season's rains, that returned, that flooded the creeks and signalled the breaking of the bar and eventually their return to koorrabup, to the swan's reflection and into the arms of family and friends with their fires and food a plenty; to the spring-tides of fertility, to noppa: babies in their koota bags, and then when moorart, when nourished, when the sandbar returned, they'd return, once more, to their fires in the forest's deep waiting for Koorabup: waiting for the signal of return to speak, its words in the running rush and gurgling creeks and the flooded river's return to the sea.