Krakens

Illustration by Julianna Jackson

Krakens

In silence it’s slept for years upon years.

It lived alone in only imagined fears.

Observable facts had locked the door,

So minds need delve to such depth no more.

Ne’er thinking of danger lurking deep below.

 “All that is has been seen,” we say; do we know?

And so I boarded the ship calmly and cool

With all the confidence of an ignorant fool.

My ignorance wasn’t as such that I didn’t know,

But that I claimed to know so much that just wasn’t so,

And on a typical day, such things make no difference,

But tell that to the man, who prays for deliverance,

Locked in the clutches of what he knew didn’t exist,

Hoping now for the miracle he so stubbornly dismissed.

Humility comes quick when the unknown strikes fast,

A lesson we forget once the danger has passed.

This prayer I now write is my last desperate act:

An eyewitness testimony to the dreadful fact

That there still remain Krakens lurking below,

Even though we’re quite sure that such mustn’t be so.

If you find this bottle floating and in it this note,

Heed the warning I give in the words that I wrote,

“Don’t think for a moment all that is, has been seen,

For you got this message, and a Kraken devoured me.”

~ Rev. Peter T. Atkinson