#38 Kevin Brophy ‘Where is the beginning of the story?’

She knows that every story

starts with that thin, proud

letter ‘I’, even the ones that don’t

because if you look long enough

through the long grass of any text

you’ll soon find an I standing up

above everything else

announcing itself as a beginning

then later the usual swarms of them

numerous as grasshoppers across those rows

and paddocks of prose

the teachers want you to ‘read’

or just follow —

so she runs her finger through

the seedy heads of the words,

parts them carefully, and points

to the beginning of the story,

there it is, I ……

and she’s right, the story does

always predictably start there

even after a few false starts

because it can’t start anywhere else.