Garden of Eden

Garden of Eden
I walked in the Garden of Eden today,
just a half-mile from a surf town off Hwy 1.
It felt akin to a Greek epoch—
Poseidon’s village nestled before the gateway to the underworld.
Ravens conspired, animals lay in full skeletons,
awaiting divine decree—a sight unfamiliar to most.
There, the ocean moved slower,
and the green tree of life stood solitary—
knowledge abounding, equally dead as alive.
An eerie peace enveloped the air—
quieter than silence.
A woman jogged in the distance,
gone at a second glance.
A man sped by on a bike,
knees reaching over the handlebars,
dust billowing behind him.
A 1940s plane flew overhead one moment,
vanished the next—
another fallen victim to the immortal stronghold I found myself in.
This place once thrived as a bustling radio station,
now abandoned, covered in graffiti—
marks of others who passed on.
The doors to the derelict building are grand and frayed,
branded with the deer and phoenix.
"Show me the way, Kali," written on a browned paper,
hung by a rusty nail—
Inside, hundreds of offerings and wishes line the walls and cover the floors,
perhaps to grant wishes or acknowledge the departed.
Maybe attempts to petrify loved ones in the unforgiving thief of time,
In a place I fear death has no foe.