August 4, 2021– This is a Kimo, a verse with three lines: Ten syllables on the first line, seven on the second, and six on the third. The subject is jealousy-which is a perversion of fealty, or legitimate loyalty.

A seemingly helpless woman trembles,

as she realizes the truth,

that man is free to roam.

So many people live their lives through other people, rather than alongside them. So many friendships are based on quae pro quibus (archaically, that is more than one quid pro quo), and failure to do as someone says often leads to a rupture in a friendship.

My own friendships, at least those that are authentic, and not based on conditions of commerce, obedience or being in one place as opposed to another, have lasted well beyond the time when I first met the person. I am loyal to my family and friends, and will make every effort to help those who help themselves. No one will lay an unkind hand on any family member (close or extended) or any friend, without my standing up for the affronted one.

Our collective loyalty to one another is the next level of this process. I watched an episode of the Amazon Prime series, Peaky Blinders, in which two gangs of men were squared off, ready to fire on one another-when the wife of one and sister to several other members of the titular group pushed her way through their rivals, with her baby son in a carriage, and stood in the middle of the groups-informing them that she stood to lose her husband and brothers-and asking who stood to lose their men, on the other side? She told them she and her son weren’t leaving. Although one man on each side ended up dying, the groups then dispersed.

Loyalty to mankind as a species means, in my view, that there is on co-dependence, no false litmus test that measures fealty to one person or a small group of people, and no jealousy when it happens to be the turn of another person for a friend’s attention.