So Simple

It began without grass or ocean, just a mass
like the inside of a snail shell — murky and moist
and black. Then a turtle crash landed with a world
on his back and laid eggs on a volcano.
The offspring had their own worlds —
alternate universes with timelines askew
of people once known or thought to be.
Each multiverse its own goddess
of venus, moons, mars, earth —
all planets accounted for.
Each a daughter of stone:
granite, travertine, quartz.
A small incision
in the mind
come to find
all is divine
and colorfilled
to the core
like a geode
of cobalt,
mauve,
pink. 
Simple
until
it
is.

This whole creation written
on the walls of caves —
a circle here, a triangle there,
a stick person under the stars.
It is. It is. It is.
And forever shall be until
a meteor comes and smashes
into the shell of a turtle
and nuclear war
and plastic fills oceans
and goddess gets angered
and the hieroglyphics on the walls
get wiped away
as foretold by prophets.
All will be as it was:
a blank blanket of darkness
without life.
As it was, so it shall be
for eternity and a day.
Up to the time a turtle returns
the whole begins again
until such time it burns.
Simple until it is not,
and creation turns to rot.
The cycle continues 
unless the people learn
to love the earth. 

[Kathrine Yets lives in St. Francis, Wisconsin, U.S. She is an avid educator and poet. Her poetry can be found in many literary magazines and anthologies, including Blue Heron Review, Universal Oneness Anthology, River & South Review, and 5th Wall Press. In 2018, she won the Jade Ring Award from the Wisconsin Writers’ Association. She has three chapbooks, So I Can Write (Cyberwit), The Animal Within (Unsolicited Press) and iLearn, iTeach (Cyberwit). When she is not teaching or writing, she can be found on the shores of Lake Michigan, taking walks with her husband.]