Leviathan

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Abstract

sive beast, however, and as much as you hunt it it hunts you in turn.Floating at the edges, just out of sight a hulking presence, tangible, threatening, but it does not make its move, not yet.I have faced this leviathan before.It was a close call, too close — the bus accident, a couple more steps out into the street, I was told at the hospital.

Lucky to be alive.Perhaps there was some kind of understanding between the leviathan and me after that, unspoken.Our paths might cross again over the years I might escape its maw, but in the end the leviathan will always come and there will finally be the inky black abyss and the sound of waves ringing in my ear.I still do not like the l

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eviathan but I have come to accept him, as much a part of life and myself as anything.Thank you for reading. I wrote this poem having been inspired by the maritime history of New England on a recent trip to Boston and Salem. I thought of old stories of sailors and ships, fisherman and fantastic creatures that lurked in the deep. New England is also quite old, its founding and roots stretching back a few centuries, and the longer a place has been in existence — the more it has seen and experienced — there is also bound to be more death. In walking among the old gravestones of the Granary Burying Ground in Boston and Charter Street Cemetery in Salem, I began to mull over this idea of death and the leviathan as a metaphor for it. This poem is the end result.</article></body>

A metaphor for death

Men have tried to outrun or outwit it for thousands and thousands of years, since they were first aware of its existence and its power.

How it frightened them, filled them with chill and dread and the potent weight of their own mortality.

It proves an elusive beast, however, and as much as you hunt it it hunts you in turn.

Floating at the edges, just out of sight a hulking presence, tangible, threatening, but it does not make its move, not yet.

I have faced this leviathan before.

It was a close call, too close — the bus accident, a couple more steps out into the street, I was told at the hospital. Lucky to be alive.

Perhaps there was some kind of understanding between the leviathan and me after that, unspoken.

Our paths might cross again over the years I might escape its maw, but in the end the leviathan will always come and there will finally be the inky black abyss and the sound of waves ringing in my ear.

I still do not like the leviathan but I have come to accept him, as much a part of life and myself as anything.

Thank you for reading. I wrote this poem having been inspired by the maritime history of New England on a recent trip to Boston and Salem. I thought of old stories of sailors and ships, fisherman and fantastic creatures that lurked in the deep. New England is also quite old, its founding and roots stretching back a few centuries, and the longer a place has been in existence — the more it has seen and experienced — there is also bound to be more death. In walking among the old gravestones of the Granary Burying Ground in Boston and Charter Street Cemetery in Salem, I began to mull over this idea of death and the leviathan as a metaphor for it. This poem is the end result.