LEVIATHAN

"oh, if you would but make for us a home!" -- with the lord upon us and the heat of his mighty hand leading, we came down from the mountain to the cove of clouds weeping: dreadfully ashamed and inside of us small crosses on fire. we hung over the village, twisting our necks up as if to snap at small fish. instead clouds came and pooped on our heads.

my brother and i, not belonging, had taken to the shore for it was not good for us to be alone. inside of us there was something like small dense clouds. we left the water to sleep in the sand. we spent the first day climbing up pine trees and playing in sea caves. we batted storm waves out with our tails and wrestled and screamed on the shore. when we crumbled a mountain a small fishing village streamed onto the beach, begging for mercy--their docks and fishing boats in disrepair. the villagers were afraid of other mountains falling on them. they trembled every time we sneezed.

soon we ruled over the villagers and they called us sons of the morning star. every morning the they delivered 10 wise and foolish virgins to our sea cave. we strung them up like beads and hung them around the cave by their hair. then we sat at the top of our own mountain and drank tea in a temples made of ivory. the time came when we needed a hot tub. on our demands, the villagers built an elaborate network canals to direct lava into a pool beneath a giant cauldron. we sat all night in the cauldron watching venus until it faded with the morning.

and one day we listened and oh! we heard it: the sound of the lord walking through the garden in the cool of the day. when he called us by our christian names we hid among the trees. the villagers ran away screaming and there settled in us again the small clouds we ached from before. the lord found us crying with our fins in our mouths behind a sacred grove of sequoia trees. he lead us down the beach and we wept openly as we went. we wept because we had only known of us crest and now we knew of his peak.