Creation Myth
Never was the land together,
cohesive, an uninterrupted mass
of soil, rock, sand, grass
all bound in a harmonious package, leather
spread-eagled in one faultless piece.
Always were places disparate.
Sky unbroken, but land split
and ponded, rivered. Water reached
out from every fissure, issuing
lacklessly. The ground’s appendages
multiplied, fresh edges
made into shores and ocean chewing
into them eagerly. In the beginning,
this wasn’t a big problem for
people. They swam well, explored
by boat. At length, the constant crossing
of distances somehow seeped
into their bodies, their cores. They’d say,
It can’t have always been this way,
and dream of land gathered up in a heap.
Never was there a cosmology more creative.
ReplyDeleteMy, such music:
ReplyDelete"leather spread-eagled in one faultless piece," "land split and ponded, rivered," "fissure, issuing lacklessly," "ocean chewing..."
In the beginning, some say, was the word, within it sounds that carried forward all creation.
I like how this starts formally, and then becomes conversational; and that it takes more than one read to "get" the whole picture.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy lines like these:
"Always were places disparate.
Sky unbroken, but land split
and ponded, rivered."
Then, I love how it all transitions into: "In the beginning, this wasn't a big problem for people. They swam well, explored by boat..."