{"id":241961,"date":"2023-08-14T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=241961"},"modified":"2023-08-10T05:05:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T04:05:10","slug":"surf-the-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/surf-the-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"Surf the Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Courtesy of Ompalace<\/p><\/div>\n

We stand on doomsday\u2019s beach
\nwatching waves rise and crash,
\nbreathing the brisk and final breeze.
\nShiva holds in one of his four arms
\na surfboard carved from a bodhi tree,
\nHis partner Durga and their son Ganesh
\nstand beside him, boardless.
\nI clutch a battered styrofoam body board,
\nknuckles white.
\nOver the waves gallops a white mare \u2013
\nmane and tail streaming.
\nKalki, the last avatar, rides her \u2013
\nwhite beard streaming,
\nblowing his conch and shouting,
\n\u201cTime\u2019s up!\u201d
\nShiva paddles with four hands through the surging surf.
\nShivering, I flop onto my board and try to keep up with him.
\nDurga and Ganesh mount the air and drop onto the waves.
\nShe rides them barefoot on a cushion of kundalini;
\nhe skims them on ivory skates.
\nThe sea swells and circles us,
\nwhirling in rings that seem to rise,
\nbut it\u2019s we who are sinking into them.
\nThe ocean becomes a funnel of fire
\nthat doesn\u2019t burn but caresses in farewell
\nand turns my fear to joy.
\nAll the waters and lands are sweeping together,
\nall the creatures are riding and whooping,
\nswarming over the waves in the final celebration,
\nend of time, space and matter,
\nend of the universe,
\ninto the great womb of Parashakti,
\ntaking it all back home to Brahman.
\nAs we shoot the curl down the chute,
\nDurga blows Shiva a kiss,
\nand he waves and shouts, \u201cGood show!\u201d
\nWe laugh, we laugh, we laugh
\nall the way to silence and dissolution
\nuntil the next emerging
\ninto another blissful miserable divine profane glorious monstrous all-sacred cycle. Aum.<\/p>\n

Jamming in Prime Time<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rudra and the Maruts, the multi-media band,
\nare bored with winter and want to play.
\nThey tune up behind the sky,
\nshadow the sun and hush the birds,
\nblow a fortissimo fanfare to open the show,
\nrumble and flash the air,
\nspit and splat staccatos of rain,
\npush big blue cloud cushions down to earth,
\nsoak us with lush spews,
\ncaress us with windblown scents of pine and humus,
\nthen end with a crescendo of hail.
\nAll we helpless humans can say is,
\n\u201cSpringtime!\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to contact Shiva and his family and enrich your life with their presence, this website will show you how, all for free: <\/em>https:\/\/meetshiva985866381.wordpress.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

William T. Hathaway\u2019s<\/em> books won him a Rinehart Foundation Award and a Fulbright professorship in creative writing. <\/em>His peace novel,<\/em> Summer Snow<\/em><\/a>, is the story of an American warrior falling in love with a Sufi Muslim and learning from her that higher consciousness is more effective than violence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We stand on doomsday\u2019s beach
\nwatching waves rise and crash,
\nbreathing the brisk and final breeze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":241963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[868,3046],"class_list":["post-241961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-poetry","tag-shiva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241964,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241961\/revisions\/241964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}