By William T. Hathaway

Surf the Apocalypse

We stand on doomsday’s beach
watching waves rise and crash,
breathing the brisk and final breeze.
Shiva holds in one of his four arms
a surfboard carved from a bodhi tree,
His partner Durga and their son Ganesh
stand beside him, boardless.
I clutch a battered styrofoam body board,
knuckles white.
Over the waves gallops a white mare –
mane and tail streaming.
Kalki, the last avatar, rides her –
white beard streaming,
blowing his conch and shouting,
“Time’s up!”
Shiva paddles with four hands through the surging surf.
Shivering, I flop onto my board and try to keep up with him.
Durga and Ganesh mount the air and drop onto the waves.
She rides them barefoot on a cushion of kundalini;
he skims them on ivory skates.
The sea swells and circles us,
whirling in rings that seem to rise,
but it’s we who are sinking into them.
The ocean becomes a funnel of fire
that doesn’t burn but caresses in farewell (more…)

Vacanas are short, informal poems of devotion to Shiva. They originated in South India during the tenth century, a time of social upheaval, and they took the side of poor against the rich, of spontaneous free expression against established orthodoxy, of passion against propriety. Our times are similar to those, so they speak to us across the millennium and are now enjoying a revival by contemporary poets. (more…)