The Quantum Uncertainty of the Nagapushpam
If you need a metaphor
for your life, consider
the nagapushpam,
the snake-flower, cobra-
flower, god-flower,
that, according to the internet
blooms once every 36 years.
Naga, meaning snake in Sanskrit,
The Great Snake. A deity.
Consider the feathered shape,
the ungainly quill sown
firmly in a hermitage
of Himalayan undergrowth.
The darkness behind
is a quantum
uncertainty,
the uncertainty
of the jungle,
who has bowered her
in his limbs.
In the darkness, something
moves. In that movement,
particle and wave,
you are drawn
to its depths
now so clearly thalassic
not arboreal.
There is no nagapushpam.
No Himlayan flower,
anyway.
Not plant, but animal,
the sea pen, a coral,
flourishing
in the fathoms,
carnivorous and
cosmopolitan.
A great metaphor. Poetic and educational. Great Poem!
Thank you, Odin!
Thoroughly enjoyed this, I have nothing critical to say.
Beautiful and I learned something
I remember this Sarah, loved it then and now. Beautiful.
while I wasn’t too keen on the way it reads in the beginning — I thought David Attenborough — that last stanza is beautiful and devastating.