As Far From This World As This World Gets

In contests between earth, sea, and sky,

We tend to prefer the sky. Marduk

Vanquishes Tiamat, Teshub kills

Illuyanka in a comeback win,

YHWH fishes for Leviathan,

Zeus mutilates Typhon, buries him

Under mountains, volcano monster.

Still a lot of lightning and fighting

Goes on; monsters never really die

Because of course they are not alive,

Nor the sky. Our immortality

Beliefs stem from attaching lifelike

Agency to the deeper aspects

Of nature, those violent events

That are not living forms, never die.

Gods and monsters, names for winds and waves,

Earthquakes, volcanos, dragon-haunted

Caves, tell us, breathless, so much happens

Without parentage, without dying,

Without evolving, a static world

Of constant, recurring turbulence.

Give those orphan phenomena names,

Conflicts, back stories, motivations,

And like all actors they yield drama,

But because they cannot ever quit

They also generate byproduct

Belief in living immortally,

Fighting forever. But why the sky?

Could we not prefer the teeming seas?

Are snakes and eels worse than lightning bolts?

Lights and clouds are richly ominous

As sudden rumblings from underground. 

The sky is emptier than the earth,

And even the lives that float in it

Come to ground. We think we are the sky,

As far from this world as this world gets.