by Jeremy Thomas/ www.unsplash.com
Legacy: A Sestina by Maggie DeNoon
As time marches forward, mythology
shows you the same characters.
A hidden clue to life.
How could it be that a people
who are separated by oceans and see the sun
rise at different times, tell the same stories?
The essence of humanity is to create stories.
We look up to the sky and create mythology,
stitch together stars, from Acamar to Zosma, into characters.
We look into the dark of night and find life.
Or perhaps we borrow history’s people,
and make a legend, knowing there is nothing new under the sun.
And so these figures live to see yet another sun
arise in a new land. They travel in the stories
of sailors and traders. Their collective mythology,
the world serpent, the Leviathan, becomes a new land’s characters,
the Greek names are Romanized, but what stays is the life
of the gods and their trials, because they’re symbolic of a people
Interconnected, just by circumstance of being people.
The uncertain love that compelled Zeus to stitch his unborn son
to his thigh, compels us all. Cultures disconnected by war but united with stories
that are told around the fire that Prometheus stole in mythology.
And he was punished by other gods, but his character
was celebrated for the giving of life.
And so the clock turned, and life
immortalized these figures who stole fire and gave it to people,
not just Prometheus but Māui, Nanabozho, countless others gave the essence of the sun
to humanity, the theft of fire a repeated idea in the stories
of innumerable peoples and their mythology.
To repeat, to share is to be human, defines our character,
shows our good and our bad in our allegorical characters.
It tears down barriers, leaves just the life
of humanity and our struggle to survive that defines a people,
the struggle through famine, war, poverty, that all appear under a sun
that rises relentlessly, ringing out a new day, an opportunity for stories
to be shared. Your heroes and the legacy of your culture and its mythology,
appears in the classrooms, movies, novels, of a modern people, the same characters
and their life stories show up in our Harry, our Skywalker, our Katniss.
Your mythology lives to see yet another rise of the tireless sun.