Image by hhabicht from Pixabay
Published: August 2024
Location: PoetsOnline, specifically the animus section of the Archive.
Genesis: There’s an absolutely brilliant book by Lyall Watson called The Secret Life on Inanimate Objects. This poem was inspired by one of the case studies included in that book, and was enhanced by further research into the subject.
If you ever visit Hawaii, you have been warned! The rocks do not like to leave!
The signs are there for a reason.
Several, actually, mostly around respect:
for the land
for the ecology
for the Indigenous beliefs
for the Old Gods
and, specifically, for Pele.
Every year, thousands of people ignore the signs.
Choose a volcanic rock—
just a small one
that no one will ever miss,
that will surely make no difference.
It’ll look good on the bookshelf.
Where’s the harm?
Every year, thousands of rocks are mailed back to Maui
by people who were shown
answers to the questions;
Where’s the harm?
What difference can it make?
What’s the worst that can happen?
And each one must be lovingly stored
in a deep freeze
for a full lunar month
to kill any invisible
bacteriological hazards
that may – or may not –
have returned with them.
Does this mean that the Curse of Pele is real?
Is the Old God of the Volcano really so possessive
of every fragment of His domain
that He willingly rains down bad luck and ill fortune
on all those who ignore the signs
and help themselves
to a piece of that sacred mountain?
Possibly.
Or does the story of the Curse of Pele
become so embedded in the heads of the rock-snatchers
that they start to feel an ill wind when all is, in fact, calm;
seeing bad luck events where there is nothing out of the ordinary?
Do they eventually convince themselves
that Pele followed them home?
Maybe.
Are all those volcanic rocks returned
as a result of a curse, or a delusion?
If the end result is the same,
how can we know if the story of the curse brings on delusion
or if delusion operationalises the curse?