Poetry

Journey to the Heart of Gaia

Inside the Earth, I feel my spirit palpitate,

ancestors of other eras welcome me with

outcries of stars falling from the sky and

echoes of drums pounded on the stones.

Ancestral dances vibrate on my bare feet

covered with Caribbean roots.

 

Inside the Earth, my soul pours into mourning

for the blood spilled in fierce millennial wars.

The homo sapiens, maddened,

leaped into their greatest folly,

extermination!

 

Bloodied sap drips from within the Earth;

it is from trees in pain.

The cry of oceans, birds, and forests

gets confused with mine.

 

My Greater Antilles arms unfold

and comfort tiny beings under the Earth.

Their microscopic eyes gaze at me, but I can’t draw them.

Science falls short of explaining my feelings.

 

Inside the Earth, its core is reflected

in trillions of transparent mirrors.

A glowing underground rainbow whispers a great secret:

infinite forms of life and colors are whirling sad,

agonizing in a kaleidoscope

their beauty and grandeur, totally disturbed.

 

Is it virtual reality, science fiction, mythology, fantasy?

Perhaps, a planetary revelation?

 

I managed to see Gaia / Pachamama, hidden

behind an opaque cloak never seen before.

Could it be her light diminishing?

Could it be that she is sowing her last seeds of hope?

 

I hear a desperate scream from within the Earth,

one million species at risk of extinction.

A climate catastrophe in the anthropocentric era!

 

Yet human consciousness expands to reverse extermination:

let’s think like a mountain, feel like the planet,

vindicate the poor of the Earth,

take a quantum leap into an infinite cosmic era.

Nitza Hernández-López

Nitza Hernández-López is a bilingual Puerto Rican poet and visual artist living in Salem, Oregon. Her poetry has appeared in several printed and online anthologies such as /pãn |dé |mïk /2020: An Anthology of Pandemic Poems, Antologías de Poesía Oregoniana, Terra Incognita (Oregon Poets), Verseweavers, lalibreta.online, hojanegra.com, and vozdevoces. She has won poetry awards from the Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) and the Instituto de Cultura Oregoniana. With a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she published numerous papers throughout her academic career. Nitza practices yoga and meditation, and volunteers as a radio producer for the Latinx community radio station.

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Parable of the Sower
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