(King Solomon's Seal: Polygonatum biflorum) Apocryphal or not, his are a motley lot: the demon of the winds, the one who leads you into error or stupidity. A lion-shaped one who keeps anyone ill from recovery. One that goads women in childbirth to a frenzy, so they strangle their newborns; one who causes colic, motion sickness, surrender to lust. Some are hybrid in form: canine heads, horse bodies, fish backs, legs of a mule. From their mouths drip famine and drought, despair and disease. With the archangel's mystical ring, he can summon, stun, and subdue them— but before binding them with magical spells, first he conscripts their labor. They prepare the soil, cut stone and haul marble, bake bricks for the raising of the temple. With his ring he seals them, back into the dense oblivion haunted by fallen angels. There is a plant named after this instrument, this ornament of a king's power: King Solomon's seal— perianth of a flower, rhizomes bearing scars of ancient struggles to survive.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
