Wrapped Around your Shoulders
We have always been moments from destruction.
There has never been a moment when we haven’t been aware
that perfection is finite and unstable.
Ancient Egyptians used to believe that the Nile was home
to a massive snake capable of swallowing the sun
and it was when the waters were low and especially navigable
when the surrounding shores were the most fertile and best for cultivation
that this snake would shake itself out of sleep
and inhale passing boats
because they, too, knew that things are never
as good as they seem, that comfort is an illusion.
In Melanesia, another snake creature waits in the water
for fishermen who get too greedy, pull too many fish
from the depths of its home. When this happens, the snake
comes out of hiding and swallows the boat, man, and catch whole
leaves only memories as a warning.
Every dark cave hides a monster, every lake, another.
We are being spied on by mirrors and reflective pools—
there is no such thing
as safety or peace.
__________
Holly Day
Review by Philip Kirsch
A straightforward (part of what I like) piece that perhaps we can all relate to: that sense of insecurity we carry “wrapped around [our] shoulders.” The two interesting anecdotes illustrate that tragedy lurks sometimes when we selfishly violate nature (Melanesia), and sometimes just when we become self-satisfied with good fortune (Egypt). After all, “perfection is…unstable,” “comfort…an illusion,” and history (“memories”) should warn us of what can happen (is it too much of a reach to cite current events in the USA?).
“We are being spied on by mirrors and reflective pools” — perhaps we should examine our own reflection in that mirror, not become hypnotized like Narcissus by our own qualities, or success, and be aware that “there is no such thing as [permanent] safety or peace.”