“Old Earth/New Earth (after Eckhart Tolle)” by Dan Grossman

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Old Earth/New Earth
(after Eckhart Tolle)

The old earth seems solid enough
even though the continental plates
might fall to the kitchen floor
at any time and shatter
as it were
and when they do
we’ll be standing on a new earth
you and I.

The configurations will be different
enough to short circuit our GPSs
and the dates will dribble off
our calendars onto the ground
in pools of black ink.

The rivers will turn solid
and the continents
will flow to the sea
and if these changes can be charted
it won’t be on the map
yellowing in the glove compartment
of your chosen spiritual vehicle.

Meanwhile the creeds
of the great religions
will have shifted
in syntax and in meaning
as if magnetic north had just switched
with magnetic south

while you were genuflecting
to Mother Earth
like Barry Lopez
on the shore of the Arctic Ocean.

And if my prophecies
disappoint you
by never being fulfilled
you’ll continue
to yearn for cataclysms
to delineate the border
between the present age
and the next
because you are,
after all,
scared shitless
by the unmarked passage of time.