Creation, by Jane Dougherty

Schöpfungsgeschichte II, by Franz Marc (Germany) 1914.

Creation

It began in the mud a million fathoms away, when dark fingers worked, from mysteries and murk, the deep sea horse-fish and whale-cats, dolphin-swans and eagle-eels. Mud made the earth squirm and slither, gallop and flutter with life that ocean-poured and rain-washed through great forests fronded and garlanded with shining mud-mysteries. Trotting the forests and skimming skies heavy with tropical rain, they pissed us out, naked microbes.

Perhaps it was the primal mistake, the original sin, a misstep in the orgiastic dance. We were the worm in the apple spawned from joy and trust. We grew, spread like bacteria on a corpse, like the foxholes and shell holes that pock the fields pitted with steel shards, where death hangs on rolls of wire.

Perhaps there are no more mysteries left in the mud, but perhaps the beauty that was shredded on razor wire and dismembered in the sucking clay still swirls and twists in seashell whorls, waiting. Perhaps, at the end, we will turn to the befouled and violated ocean and see blue horses galloping in the rising tide to the symphonic clamour of grieving for lost children.
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At the end, I hope white dolphin-swans will bear me away.

​Jane Dougherty

​Jane Dougherty is Irish, living and writing (not necessarily in that order) in southwest France. She writes novels, short stories, very short stories and poetry. She has been published in several magazines and web journals including Enchanted Conversations, Eye To The Telescope, The Ogham Stone, Literally Stories, Hedgerow Journal, The Bamboo Hut, Visual Verse, Three Drops from a Cauldron, and Lucent Dreaming. Her website:https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/