Antipodes

I find Orion the hunter here

up to the north and on his head.

Above his feet is spread

a dome studded with unfamiliar

configurations, star by alien star.

Meanwhile my body, through my feet

while I look up, points home,

clean through the stable-seeming spinning globe

—drought-blistered, cyclone-hit,

quake-riven earth, as though

herself were in despair

at man’s failure to care,

his obsessive, his mad drive to go

on down the same old way,

hell-bent to destroy

himself and her.

If I could plummet down a radial line…

But between me and mine

the surface curves away, away

and all across it play

flickers of the grumbling storm,

and through this warm

clear air

gooseflesh me with fear.