Cataclysm*

Suddenly

a sun-drenched valley

peels back from the mountains

consuming settlement into carpet roll

of Earth.

I had prime seat to the jugglery

that whimsically threw up depths and buried heights

belied science and meaning

silenced chatter in soul’s mausoleum.

Uniformed personnel gathered

veiled by the dust of burial

and the bombast of rescue and resilience

reverberated in emptiness of birdsong.

I turned and returned

against the surging towards spectacle

shrunk into dwarfish irrelevance[1]

to survive the stampede of community.

Tentacles reached from all sides.

The drama of human versus Reality

and its inevitable cataclysmic climax

was the next chapter of the hero’s journey.

I passed many familiar faces

of lovers who betrayed and lovers I betrayed

of admirers and haters, family only in name

and of past selves from a simpler life.

At each encounter I excoriated skin

that bound us in one body of history

and flesh was freed to swing her hips

like Earth’s un-narrated primordiality.

(Those who dance with liberated hips

hold the secret of cataclysmic wisdom

when lightning bolts cleave time’s continuity

in ruins of civilisations.)

The juggler deceives.

Undanced, intelligence is untouched

by bone-constellations of revelation

as simple as Earth’s whimsy.

As night fell, I was alone.

As communities gathered, I self-absorbed.

As solutions harangued, I created—

Suddenly.

*This poem is inspired by a dream I had of a valley peeling back from the surrounding mountains and the ensuing events.

[1] The archetype of the dwarf is an ancient invocation of the smallness of selfhood that is required in our descent into our seed or primordial self.