A Kingdom for His Teddy Bear
︎︎︎ Sarah Wallis
︎ July 28, 2021
A royal heart scarab carved in green jasper
and gold, protects all the possible imagined
futures of a god king that lived millennia ago,
placed in his tomb, so cold and alone with his
hope and his hieroglyphs meaning – to come
into being – the scarab – the beetle - clutched
close, his talisman, hovering by his heart,
a king’s ransom for a gold teddy bear, did he
fear to go into the cold ground and demand
his own ransomed future to wake up and look
upon one kind face, a carved familiar in green
jasper and gold, still sleeping...
asleep as he has been all this long time while.
Note: King Sobekemsaf II of Egypt in 1590 BC was buried with a scarab made of jasper and gold, a simple human face carved in the jasper and the object placed over his heart, to protect the seat of personality and intelligence when the soul is judged in the afterlife.
and gold, protects all the possible imagined
futures of a god king that lived millennia ago,
placed in his tomb, so cold and alone with his
hope and his hieroglyphs meaning – to come
into being – the scarab – the beetle - clutched
close, his talisman, hovering by his heart,
a king’s ransom for a gold teddy bear, did he
fear to go into the cold ground and demand
his own ransomed future to wake up and look
upon one kind face, a carved familiar in green
jasper and gold, still sleeping...
asleep as he has been all this long time while.
Note: King Sobekemsaf II of Egypt in 1590 BC was buried with a scarab made of jasper and gold, a simple human face carved in the jasper and the object placed over his heart, to protect the seat of personality and intelligence when the soul is judged in the afterlife.
Sarah Wallis is a poet and playwright based in Scotland, UK. Recent work is online at Trampset, Lunate, and Abridged (Nyx issue) and in print journals Finished Creatures (Stranger issue) and The Alchemy Spoon (Metal issue). A chapbook, Medusa Retold, is available from @fly_press and she tweets @wordweave.