The Travelling


Grandmother used to tell the story
of a little mouse who travelled
down the river with his mother
in a dinghy made of kauri wood.

Her eyes still closed, 
in the too-early morning
she would hinge open the covers
for me to crawl inside and press
my cold, bare feet against her own
warm two. Taking my hand, 
tracing endless circles against
its palm, holding me 
rapt, while the family slept in
she would begin the tale, 
the same way every time:

The sun was rising as the little mouse
packed a picnic lunch, picked up
his mum and rowed downstream, past
all the creatures of the world.
The birds were first to serenade them
as they passed pohutakawa boughs: 
the flightless kiwi shook his fluff 
and made slide-whistle whoops 
to call the tui with her two-bell tones
and parson’s-collar breast puffed up
like Sunday best for mouse and mum,
then every bit of feather a child’s mind
could catch. Further downstream
the mouse slipped by a cobra and a boa
and a rattlesnake who swayed
and sang as toatara lizards sunned 
like drowsy tourists on the shore
where kodiak and grizzly bears and cats
with spots and stripes and claws
reached toward the mouse
whose mother only waved 
as they rowed on...

Sometime after the possums’ band
played “Tell Me Why,” and just before
the one-act play starring zebras and baboons,
my grandfather would stir, so she
would stop the story there,
promise to start again the next
too-early morning, and if I asked
where they were rowing to
or why they never reached
the sea, she wouldn’t tell,
except to say:

It is the travelling,
the taste for it, 
that ever is important.


Ali Fischer