Hawaii Poems: Garden of Eden, Jungle, Lava Palm, A New Earth
Welcome to Life is Strange, and happy 2022! If you haven’t yet, please consider subscribing or upgrading to a paid subscription if you like what you’re reading.
Lots of love,
Eden
I spent the last few weeks adventuring through Hawaii, and wrote these poems along the way.
This first one was written at the Garden of Eden, a botanical garden on the famed Road to Hana. I wrote it while staring out over a waterfall, surrounded by stone deities, mosquitos, and purple flowers.
Garden of Eden
Ultraviolet flowers lit by internal suns
rise up out of the lily pond where the nymphs gaze over the sea
all awash in the noise of a thundering waterfall
where spiders dance to radio waves
and the view stretches endlessly
and the plants echo each other, a hall of mirrors, a net of diamonds
this earth in the stars, where seeds contain code
that blisters into forests that burn and are born again
the garden that god made lives inside all of our hearts
lush soil where love blooms freely
it’s only when we walk into the dreamworld
and imagine that we have some kind of self
or some kind of special right to another being
that the garden fades from view
caged by the chains of our blinding desires
let go for a minute
stop trying to find the garden
let it grow inside you
moss clinging to the inside of your rib cage
ultraviolet flowers shining inside your eyes
if you search for infinity you will never find it
if you try to buy paradise it will turn to dust in your hands
but if you stop in the center of the moment
the world uncoils, your self walks away into the mist
a droplet of light slides down into the cave
builds a stalactite in your chest that becomes a crystal in your mind
a crystal that becomes a garden
a garden where all doubts are birds of paradise
as beautiful as gods
where stone angels grow wings and turn to monarch butterflies
where everything lost is found
i’ll see you there
after the war’s done
after we all die out
or someday see
where we are
what we have
what we’ve been missing
what’s always been here
the sweet taste of apple in your teeth
the prick of the knowledge that draws blood
the way we circle like the seasons
tangle with each other like roots
and bloom like the growing things we are
clusters of water, blood, and spirit
living and dying in circles
inextricable from the web of light
that animates all life on this one rare lush planet
singular in the barren stars
open your eyes
hear the song that rushes through everything
open your mouth
and sing it while there’s still time
*
On my second week in Hawaii I visited Big Island and stayed at an ecovillage called Sundari Gardens. I spent a lot of time wandering the jungle, exploring the beds of lava and eating wild fruit, and wrote this on one hot afternoon.
Jungle
Giver of life
Mother of time
Jewels drip from your wrist
Pearls pour from your mouth
Angels flow like vines from your jaws
Magnet that draws lovers together
Braider of palms and spinner of tides
You milk the rain from the clouds
Pour pigment into the flowers
Sing land up from the sea
Your children smear your face with tar
And claw the flesh from your bones
Without a thought for the beating heart between their teeth
Without remembering who they are
Which is nothing without you
Their medicines are powerless without your clear waters
Their silks and steels are nothing without your dripping fruit
Their cities are helpless against your rising tides
Their walls are dust against your raging fires
You will mirror their destruction with sharp teeth and whirling storms
You will bury their bodies in your warm womb
Mistress of rebirth, unafraid of time for you cannot die
Creator of ghosts and destroyer of solar systems
With one breath you spin the planet
And with another you raze it to bone
Sew a dove-wind and start anew
*
Every 30 years or so, a volcano erupts over Big Island, completely reshaping the shoreline. While wandering across a bed of lava by the sea, I stumbled upon a palm tree oasis growing out of the iridescent obsidian, and wrote this poem in its shade.
Lava Palm
On a field of lava by the sea
A palm grows out of the iridescent black.
Once molten glaze ate this place to the ground.
Now speckled green fronds rise from the cool caverns.
Now spiders twine through the coiled mycelium,
Slipping up through the cracks.
In another part of the world, pathogens leach from melting ice.
Nuclear waste fumes in desert caverns.
The shadows of the obliterated walk through Hiroshima.
In the wastelands of Chernobyl, fungi bloom.
A palm tree grows in the lava fields.
As a virus ate the cities, neighbors carried food to each other.
When we buried our dead, staring through screens, someone sang.
As the oceans rise, we build new parks that breathe the water and return it.
As the sun grows hotter, we turn it to fuel.
We plant seeds deep in the earth, and wait.
Prophecies hum through our heads at the end of the world.
There is a sense that all this has been written,
Or sung when the world was born.
When the world was born it exploded out of blackness, a bomb bursting from nothingness.
Out of the wreckage, universes unfurled
Following spiral patterns mirrored by the plants
That curl around this palm, on this lava beach.
The oceans teem with phosphorescence.
The lava shines. From the palm, a fiery bird looks down.
We breathe jungle medicines and swallow smooth pills.
We dance blindly in the midst of the nightmare and for a moment, wake.
The lava beneath our feet cracks and life grows through.
The eggs inside us crack and life grows through.
The dream around us cracks and light shines through.
Our lives crack and new worlds smolder.
The spurned lover coughs up blood that turns to sheaths of magma
Upon which other wounded souls may walk.
In the patterns of her grief is a blueprint for creation.
The spiral shape of the stars and the ferns is a map.
You can resist it or flow
Like the lava, like the roots through the lava.
Life finds a way.
Death finds a way.
They twine together in a spiral.
Black and green.
Blood and soil.
Echoes of song remembered long ago.
All time happening at once.
Gardens of moonflowers hanging in glass cases.
Open up the window and let the night sounds flow through.
The earth spins in the stars
The palm tree grows through the wrecked world
In and out.
Like breath or water.
Listen, to the trucks and the planes
The wind and the flute humming over the floes
The way it all fits perfectly together
Like teeth into an apple’s flesh.
A seed becomes a world.
A palm tree grows in a field of lava.
*
Sundari Gardens is home to the New Earth Mandala, a retreat center based on ideals like community, spirituality, and a reciprocal relationship with the earth. Living off solar power and eating food straight from the land left me thinking about all the ways we could reshape our future as we deal with the climate crisis and all the concurrent crises that are happening alongside it. Sometimes these crises feel overwhelming, but staying at the gardens was a reminder that even small, ephemeral moments of beauty or even small places or movements or actions that embody new and regenerative values can have effects that long outlast the span of a single lifetime.
a new earth
rising up from the earth
red lava steam curls towards the stars
in an instant all this could be gone
and yet here it is
and yet here we are.
your hands in mine, you meet my eyes
your hair the color of the ocean
one million blues, your soul ragged and wild
as the flowing curtains that whisper in the evening rush.
a shared dream walks this island
and walks the space between us
a dream of grass growing from the scars of the past
a dream of holding each other as the world shakes
of growing new worlds with the strength of the sun.
on this island a new earth blooms
radiating out of the soil and cooling thru our organs
linking the moons in our bellies with the suns in our chests
curling out in the form of an ageless song.
in this vision we dream of balance
masculine and feminine, night and day
a twilight synergy forming an alchemy of creation
a creation spun together in a web of rebirth.
it may not last forever, it may only live
here in the jeweled cradle of this island, here in the warm web of your arms
where I rested as the the sun rose over the lilies and the lava
as the gods sang and tears dripped down like falling stars.
but that it existed once is proof it could exist again
and that it existed now means there is a world where it lasts forever
a world where this love and this dream are ageless, deathless
where the song of this island sings forever
floating in the pacific as the world turns
like a crystal hanging from a thread, this love catches the light
beams universes out of its fractals
and by being born, and held, and given room to grow
breathes new worlds into being
summons palm trees out of the frozen magma
sparks infinite new loves from its red core.
the world may be doomed and yet by creating paradise here
in the crook of your arms
in this island on the raging sea
perched against magma, caught in the spiral of inevitable creation and destruction
perhaps we’ve laid a path.
and though paradise is lost, and though love ends
though magma will sweep away all this one day
and though the flames are so tall
and the dark so vast, this does not mean we should not love or dream.
look at this green earth in the endless vastness of nothing
this candle lit by a spark of chaos and chance.
even against the inevitability of collapse
love opens a portal for others to walk through
more love generates more love
and even after the fire, even after the loss
love remains, writes a map for lost souls to follow,
guides them to their own temporary paradises
amidst the smoldering ruins
maybe paradise was not meant to be forever
maybe it is supposed to be now, right now with you at the edge of the world, at the edge of time
where the sun meets the moon
where the moment meets eternity
and even if the revolution never takes flight
and even if the whole world never learns the truth
singing and living the truth must be worth it
building our own dream wreaths must be enough
must be all we can do, against the rage
of time and loss
is present our tiny offerings against the coming storm
let our fragmentary existences bleed into eternity
braid hibiscus flowers, brew our teas, sing our hymns
and make small paradises while we can
and love while we are alive
and give what small gifts we have
and shine out our small fragments of primordial light
beating away inside our chests
beating the drum that walks us forward
into the nothingness, our bodies jade gardens
our souls blue waters, our love stars animating galaxies in the airless deeps.