The Otherworld #poetry #earthweal

There is an Otherworld
at the edge of our perception 
more real than our store-bought reality

It shines through us, always 
we shield our eyes because we cannot face its light,
its truth

There is an Otherworld 
between nature and super-nature
curtain pulled back on the bleeding heart of earth
ashes to ashes
crust into mantle crust

In Hawai’i 
residents of the Royal Gardens Subdivision
came face to face with it in 1983
watching helpless as lava devoured their homes

Kalapana, 1990
gone: not instantaneously but with a
marching, thunderous certainty
they tried to divert the lava flow away:
the vanity of human wishes!

There is an Otherworld 
not virtual reality 
of Dreamweavers, but
actuality profound, misunderstood 

Is it the future? 
No, it is our now:
it’s screaming
‘Fools: you live your lives surrounded by beauty
so wrapped up in your fools’ economy
you fail to see,
seek only destroy.’

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Written for earthweal

This week, Brendan has given us an extension of last week’s challenge, and asked us how we are to face a future of climate chaos, using the metaphor of ‘The Swan’ from Mary Oliver’s poem:

What else are we going to do with that swan when she reaches the shore? How else are we to sing?

I took inspiration from these lines of Oliver’s poem:

Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband’s company–
he is so often
in paradise.
Of course! the path to heaven

doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
It’s in the imagination
with which you perceive
this world,

and the gestures
with which you honor it.’

I think Blake spent a lot of time in the Otherworld which I’ve attempted to describe above. I also wanted to examine the Otherworld as a place of boundaries and transition (between past and future, life and death) wondering what it might be able to teach us about how to face our current situation. I think the answer lies in acceptance, and the courage to change the things we can.