Category: Myths & Folklore

Stirred-Up Eagles

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Photo taken in South Korea by Hyeongchol Kim. I suspect this shows an attempt by the crow at mobbing.

Stirred-Up Eagles

As an eagle fluttereth over her young, and beareth them on her wings.

Deuteronomy 32:11

Moses, clearly, doesn’t know
The first thing about a bird –
The very idea that they carry their kids on their backs
Is clearly absurd.
Now ducks will swim with their chicks up-top,
But no birds fly with the over-slung.
I mean, how would they even flap
And not dislodge their precious young ?

From the moment they are laid, they are watched –
For racoons and owls are swift.
And long before they’re fully fledged,
They’re far too heavy to lift.
They never leave the nest until they start to branch,
And not for long.
Until at last, they fly away, all by themselves,
When the urge is strong.

Moses, clearly, doesn’t know
The first thing about a bird –
A shame, for the metaphor of these loving parents
Should be heard.
And a basic grasp of aerodynamics
Would quickly scotch such a fantasy –
But above all, enjoy them for what they are,
And not what prophets would have them be.

The quote above has been elided to make it snappier, but its meaning hasn’t been changed. Some have tried to claim that the second half of the fully verse is talking only about Yahweh, and not about eagles – but if we squint hard enough to make this work out, it then becomes an appallingly bad piece of writing that changes the subject of its pronoun midway through. Perhaps this is more of a King James problem, as other translations separate the two clauses more clearly, but I guess that the Lord couldn’t be bothered to sufficiently inspire the Jacobean scribes. Either that, or the KJV is truly inerrant, and thus confirms that God is a women…

Grave Goods

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Photo by Subhasish Baidya on Pexels.com

Grave Goods

The ancient Egyptians filled their tombs with stuff,
As a trust-fund for the afterlife –
Finest robes, spices and jewellery,
Not to mention a mummified wife !
But it wasn’t just the practice of royalty,
The need, it seems, is in the bone –
Even the oldest and simplest folks
Rarely buried their friends alone.

I rather think you would smile at the thought,
How you’re combed and dressed in your finest suit –
As if you would need to impress St Peter
Or grease some angelic palms with your loot.
But then, it’s only symbolic stuff we’ve included,
Stuff you would never be without –
Family photos to show to Jesus,
While you take a drag on your favourite snout.

Even the pins in your hip, I guess,
And the handles of your coffin, and the nails.
And the memories, of course, that are left within your mind,
For beguiling the cherubs with your tales.
Not that you believed in that, of course,
Nor we who lower you into the ground,
But it just feels right, that you have them with you –
The same urge those archaeologists found.

Stubborn & Rebellious

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The Stoning of Achan by Gustave Doré

Stubborn & Rebellious

(In reply to Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

I’ve always hated that verse –
To take a disobedient, wayward son,
A glutton and drunkard, and maybe something worse –
And to drag him to the elders, and call on ev’ryone
To muster at the gate of the town
To take up stones, and put him down.

But I recently heard a theory
That asks what parents would willing follow ?
After all, it costs them so dearly,
And any sense of piety must leave them hollow.
How extreme must their son appal
For such a code to be needed at all ?

Surely this was only spoken
To deal with the psychopaths among them ?,
The ones who threatened until they were broken,
The monsters and parasites dressed as young men.
How else could they protect their town
When a rabid dog was skulking around ?

But even setting the problem of evil aside,
Is this the best defence ?
Why must the Lord make the parents decide
When enough is enough ?  It beggars all sense –
It’s just too cruel for anyone
To have to denounce their troubled son.

But honestly, I have my doubts,
That this is what is meant by it at all –
And if it is, it needs to spell it out,
Just why they’re thrust against the wall,
To stop the zealots stoning ev’ry child
By judging surliness as ‘running wild’.

Thank goodness we ignore such spite,
And wonder why we keep such books around.
For there’s a psychopath, alright,
But he’s not the frightened kid upon the ground –
Rather, he’s the one with crazy eyes
Who gladly casts the first stone from the skies.

Pierglass

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All Is Vanity by Allan Gilbert

Pierglass

People are funny with mirrors,
We see in them things that were never reflected.
We peer into glasses in gloomy old houses,
And swear that the ghosts of the vain are detected –
Sort of like negative-vampires,
Who can only be seen in their opposite form,
As a shadow that moves on the edge of our sight
When the candlelight blinks in the empty old dorm.
We whisper into the speculum,
And fancy we glimpse at the face of another
From out of the silvery clouds in the tarnish –
A movement, a flicker, our killer, our lover.
We treat them as if they were watching,
To open a portal to trap the unwary.
But deep down we know that they only reflect us –
Perhaps that’s precisely what makes them so scary…

Masquerageous

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Masquerageous

I’ve heard, before October’s through,
That Jesus dons a pair of horns.
Yet can it be, on Halloween,
He parties like he’s seventeen ?

Do you suppose, the Devil too,
Wears white beneath a crown of thorns ?
With eyes of innocence and calm,
And fake stigmata in his palm ?

And in a nightclub, might they meet
Their mirror-image of yesterday.
Perhaps they’re secretly impressed
With how their counterpart is dressed.

I guess a glance is how they greet,
A silent shock and smirk that say:
“Enjoy my life, and burn it bright –
I shan’t be needing it tonight.”

Angel & Demon

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Bacchante by Marina Dieul

Angel & Demon

Ev’ry cherub has a good side,
Has a cute and blond-curled nonesuch,
Muted-trumpet, harp-soft-touch.
But deep within, they surely hide
A grinning, sharp-horned, prong-tailed whiplash,
Bass-drum-beating, cymbal crash.

The truth is, in ev’ry Gabriel,
A Lucifer is also present –
Ready, should things get unpleasant…
But likewise, in the darkest Hell,
In each Beelzebub in town,
A Michael waits to calm things down.

Musical AI version generated by Suno.com – find more of them over here.

Here Be Dragons

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Death Loves Me by Todd Lockwood

Here Be Dragons

Nothing excites like a fragment of coastline,
A ribbon of mountains, an island arc,
A river’s meander, an outpost upon it,
A highway to cross it, and leave its mark.

Fantasy maps have gotten much better these days,
With histories drawn in tectonics –
With rain-shadowed deserts and cyclonic trade-winds,
And conlangic place-names correct in their phonics.

Readers demand that their continents drift,
On a globe that is spinning through space –
Our increase in knowledge has moved-on our world,
And our make-believe realms must keep pace.

Adventurers trek across accurate kingdoms,
The blanks are uncovered, the borders expand,
And fossils are dug-up of earlier monsters –
The dragons evolve now, and so does the land.

Gin in the Clockcase

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Attic at Lanhydrock by Bob Shand

Gin in the Clockcase

Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though they’re rarely of much of int’rest to the street beyond –
Just little feuds and little quirks,
That strengthen and spice the filial bond.
One day, when the rest of the world has forgotten me,
I’ll still be in the scope
Of my great grandchildren, who vaguely recall me,
And do so with and smile (I hope).

Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though that sounds far too full of passion and crime –
We haven’t got literal skeletons in cupboards
Just rumours made respectable by time.
One day, when my genome is who-knows-where,
Those little pieces of me may frown
How funny we were back in my day,
As we lurk in attics and photos, and the stories we’ve handed down.

Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though they’re only called that because it seems fun.
We’re making some now, though we don’t yet realise,
And half won’t be solved, though it matters none.
One day, the hurt and the shame will heal,
As we sense that we’re better together than alone.
And the good times will always be there to be remembered,
Though they change through the telling, as we make them our own.

Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though Dostoyevsky says that we’re all the same –
I disagree, through the jokes we inherit
That shouldn’t be funny, and which we cannot explain.
One day, when we no longer have a family bible,
We’ll need a new place to write our names –
Then my great grandchildren can vaguely recall me,
Half-hidden by a water-stain.

A Locked-Tomb Mystery

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Scottish Hot Cross Buns by Marijke Blazer

A Locked-Tomb Mystery

Maybe there really was a guy who said,
“Why can’t we get along ?”
Maybe the poor sap went and wound-up dead,
From when it all went wrong.
And maybe his still-believing converts claimed
He rose up from the grave,
Like dozens of disciples of previous prophets
Framed their loss to keep them brave.

Hardly a two-pipe problem, this.
Not much call for the little grey cells.
But round-up the witnesses if you wish,
And compare the parallels.
Now, how many women approached the site ?
Three ?  Or two ?  Or one alone ?
How many young men dressed in white ?
Was there a guard ?  Or tampered-with stone ?

We’ve so few clues for the how, why, or when,
But remember the first rule of proof –
Eliminate the impossible,
Then what remains is likely the truth.
Maybe there really was a guy who said
“Let’s love our neighbours, hey ?”
And maybe, alas, he really wound-up dead.
And that’s all there is to say…