Tuesday June 23, 2009
tincture
At eight I learned the word ‘tincture’. I carried the word around on my tongue. I chanted it like holy word, like spell.
Before that, it was just ‘potion’ or sometimes ‘perfume’. Flower petals collected, leaves. Grass with morning dew. Bits of spider web. An old cupboard door for a chopping board. A river rock for pummeling. Old jams jars with creek water. I would cut and crush. Chop and stir. Mix it in with a stick until it was full and frothy. The tang of damp nature.
It’s a tincture. It’s a potion. It’s special perfume.
We were set free for whole mornings, whole afternoons.
Our house made from bamboo. Our tyre swing.
With our pockets full of crackers and boiled lollies, we would go. Across the road, down to the creek.
We found a goat cave high up a mud wall. We’d scramble up and sit, ankle deep in goat shit, on wooden beer crates.
We would try to catch the fresh water crabs, bellycrawling along the creek edge.
I had a real knife. You had a real gun. Chopping vegetation, carving our names into the dirt wall. Shooting slugs into the creek bank.
Aged eight, aged six. Keeping busy, keeping out of Mum’s hair. Shimmying along back fences and stealing fruit.
A swing, a knife, a gun. Acid stomachs from too many sweets and apples. We would stay until it started to get dark, or there was a call across the road from home.
The only other thing was if creekwater came over the rim of a gumboot. A scurry home for dry socks.
Camelia petals gave off an impressive foam. Certain grasses would bleed milk. Breath of heaven for the scent.
It is a tincture. It is a trick. It is a treat.
It is a locket, for locking and hiding down a shirt against a heart. For taking out and opening on the very
rare occasion.