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| 'Jellyfish' 5x5" colored pencil; Kathleen Faulkner |
God of the Jellyfish
The god of the jellyfish
must be a luminous, translucent bowl
the size of a big top,
drifting upside down
in an unbounded sea.
Surely this god, hung
with streamers and oral arms,
ruffled and lacy
as thousands of wedding gowns
and Victorian bodices,
created all the jellyfish of Earth.
Male and female, god created them
in god’s own image:
the cross jellies and the crystal jellies,
the sea nettle and the golden lion’s mane,
the sea wasp and the Portuguese man-of-war—
and gave them nerve nets instead of brains
to ensure their humility,
put statoliths like tiny pearls
in their sensory pits
to give them balance,
and placed spines on their nematocysts
so they could capture food
and would sting and burn any
living thing
that would harm them.
And the god of the jellyfish
gave them ocelli
that shine like the eyes on a butterfly wing
when they turn toward the light,
and now their god watches over them
with god’s own great ocellus
as they swirl and dive
in glistening cathedrals, and does not
expect worship or even praise:
the iridescence
of their umbrellas will suffice.
— Lucille Lang Day
From God of the Jellyfish, first published
in The Cloud View Poets (Arctos Press)
