Memory Drips Like Water Through Limestone
January 31st, 2006Save as PDF
When I was ten or so my parents took my sister and me on a spring vacation trip to Virginia: Mt.Vernon, Monticello, Williamsburg, and, most exciting of all, Luray Caverns. This poem is an extremely fanciful extrapolation of my memories of that visit.
Memory Drips Like Water Through Limestone
Suddenly the guide switched on the lights,
Revealing a fantastic chamber, though perhaps
Not quite as awesome as we’d hoped or feared,
Since we’d all seen glossy color pictures of the hall
On postcards, signs and maps.
Stalactites and stalagmites rose and fell
And touched or failed to touch each other.
We all liked a formation called
“The Devil’s Organ,” which looked
Just like one, and “The Wedding Cake.”
We heard the plink and splish of water.
We breathed dank air. And somewhere underground
That day, we lost you. Are you still there
In Pluto’s Workshop, hoping that the guide will notice
That you’re missing from the group?
Or are you hiding from him
As the lights in Pluto’s Workshop dim,
And the voices of the visitors recede to silence,
And the darkness deprives you not of sight alone,
But of all sensation?
At the cave’s remotest reaches
The water gushes in, a torrent from the rock.
Below, ebony pools, peopled by albino fish,
Lie still as metal in the great and famous halls
The tourists troop to see.
But at the cavern’s mouth
Only a placid spring burbles into daylight.
We’d have had no notion that a wondrous realm
Lay just below the surface of this meadow
If it weren’t for all the advertising.
We emerged without you. I was feverish,
And I lay down in the back seat,
Burning, as gaudy pictures shimmered
And reshaped themselves.
A small voice said to leave you there.
