Tsunami, a poem

Whom Do You Trust?

Image by Roland Mey from Pixabay

Goethe must have seen the animal
stop,
tilting her head ever so slightly
to receive her knowing

He must have seen the human beings
stare,
scratching their overstuffed heads in puzzlement
at sea-abandoned sand
and acrobatic fish, then
fill their pockets with furry sand dollars
(alive! and now so easy to grasp!)

He must have seen her
turn and flee, a single motion
summoned by ancient truth

while the human beings
nodded one to the other, bestowing
certitude (safety in numbers!) and
reassurance (we can’t all be wrong!) and

ignoring her lightning exodus
to higher ground, a flight that required
no permission

Surely, Goethe must have pitied the human beings,
mesmerized by the moon shell and its
Fibonacci implications, the ones who finally
lifted their eyes only to be

engulfed in water, the ones
who silenced the language that
waits beneath words:
the impulse they were born with,
the one designed to save them

Or maybe he saw none of this. Maybe he wrote
“Just trust yourself,
then you will know how to live”

for another reason, one that
only you will ever know

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Keep your light shining bright.

Mary