Trouble in Paradise
Hawai`i the Big Island
Trouble in paradise
Halema`uma`u Crater, Pele, the fire goddess’s legendary abode
at 56,000 feet above depressed ocean floor.
Pele’s awakening, fiery red and passionate
Surprising the volcanologists, geologists, scientists, tourists
The ecosystems shaken, Nature, communities
Pele births alerts, eruptions, explosions
24 steaming fissures appearing , daily changing. cracking the earth
exhaling sizzling sulfur
destroying paradisiacal dreams of peaceful living
and calm seductive waters
Pele is the powerful Fire Goddess familiar in Puna and beyond
She is the nemisis of her sister
sweet, beautiful Hi`iaka, ikapoliopele
kind, compassionate, loyal, and loving
to all who know or meet her.
Madame Pele reigns immortal
coughs up to her magic
devours forests of trees
communities of individualists
organic life, the lives of Hawaiians
and occasional anarchists, mistrustful or hiding from the US government
(which nonetheless tries to understand and remedy the growing loss).
Paradoxically Pele exhales destruction
The growing eruptions, the new earth, the fountaining magnitude of lava!
Pele inhales deep magma.
The magical alchemy of re-creation.
Ron