Colors and tones of the stone outweigh the blaze-red of the stroked figure.
Still, profound the geometry of intent. That’s clear.
Imagine a place of power a retreat darker in a night without stars.
The ceiling houses the terror, a returning necessity. This is not a dwelling.
A place to gather from then move taking with little other than renewal.
NOTE
Photos from visits over several years to Dog Creek Cave, North Umpqua. The massive Jack Fire in 2021 seared slopes and steep canyons, black trees standing, rockshelter spared one more season. Poem above, DB.
Poems below:
— Lucille Clifton, here yet be dragons from The Book of Light (1993) Copper Canyon Press
— Kay Ryan, from the poem All Shall Be Restored in Elephant Rocks (1997) Grove Press.
here yet be dragons
so many languages have fallen
off of the edge of the world
into the dragon's mouth. some
where there be monsters whose teeth
are sharp and sparkle with lost
people. lost poems. who
among us can imagine ourselves
unimagined? who
among us can speak with so fragile
tongue and remain proud?
All Shall Be Restored
The grains shall be collected
from the thousand shores
to which they found their way,
and the boulder restored,
and the boulder itself replaced
in the cliff, and likewise
the cliff shall rise
or subside until the plate of earth
is without fissure.
… And every word written shall lift off
letter by letter, the backward text
read ever briefer, ever more antic
in its effort to insist that nothing
shall be lost.
