Ode to Laurel Caverns

Great Cave, Womb of Earth,

Keeper of Earth's secret time

before the coming of the restless apes,

with reptile brains, we slow,

we crawl into your night.

Our eyes gone blank

we move uneasily into a velvet darkness.

Cascading water,

warmth of piezoelectric force

pull us deep into a maze

of jagged, tumbled rock

where shy and strange-faced creatures

long of hand and limb

cling to shadowed walls,

flicker in far darkness.

Vast piercings of strange light

break through mammalian awareness;

bring back eternity

when men were not yet men,

when alien forms cherished

quite other modes of consciousness.

Star-worlds open

deep within the rock-strewn dark.

© Linda Falorio, 1987