#ancient echoes

The rover found himself among nomads who claimed the shoreline as their basilica, his head bowed, his pagan hearts wide open. As they were, so too was he, emboldened by the charades that the fates play, and weeping as he heads home empty handed.   The siren of the virgin sea moved through salt air like water flowing upstream, her feet kissing the sand better than most know pavement. She…

“When I said that Mercy stood Within the borders of the wood, I meant the lenient beast with claws And bloody swift-dispatching jaws.”

― Lawrence Spingarn

Thank you for the morsel, friend; a delightful glimpse into nature's shade. How timely, I was just discussing such a matter with the Fish. Big and small fish aren't constantly at odds, you know… often, they simply pass each other by in lazy, drifting scenes. This cordiality is typical until the big fish becomes hungry. Hunger is its own emotion, like anger and lust, which possesses the mind until sated. Such is life… civilization ends at the shore, they like to say down there; perhaps it really ends at the gut.

Spingarn crafts something skillfully ambiguous, I always appreciate unclarity: Mercy could be that fleeting, lenient moment I describe, where potential violence is withheld when devouring is a fully conceivable option. Or it could be the brutal efficiency when the hunger hits, the clean attack that ends pain before the nerves hardly have time to report it.