Why We Tell Stories

For Linda Foster I Because we used to have leaves and on damp days our muscles feel a tug, painful now, from when roots pulled us into the ground and because our children believe they can fly, an instinct retained from when the bones in our arms were shaped like zithers and broke neatly under their feathers and because before we had lungs we knew how far it was to the bottom as we floated open-eyed like painted scarves through the scenery of dreams, and because we awakened and learned to speak 2 We sat by the fire in our caves, and because we were poor, we made up a tale about a treasure mountain that would open only for us and because we were always defeated, we invented impossible riddles only we could solve, monsters only we could kill, women who could love no one else and because we had survived sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, we discovered bones that rose from the dark earth and sang as white birds in the trees 3 Because the story of our life becomes our life Because each of us tells the same story but tells it differently and none of us tells it the same way twice Because grandmothers looking like spiders want to enchant the children and grandfathers need to convince us what happened happened because of them and though we listen only haphazardly, with one ear, we will begin our story with the word and