Understory

Waiting for the forecast

Of severe thunderstorms

To finally come true,

What about sacred caves?

A species that liked them

Since it was another

Earlier species, if

Species even measures

Anything, you’d expect

Would explore them, but still,

Humans more than love them.

Something about caving

Lures imagination,

Is imagination’s

Mother of metaphor.

Here you are at the mouth

Of one, feeling sheltered,

Watching the storm roll in,

But you’re considering

How caves seemed entrances

To dreamlike underworlds,

Counterparts to bright air,

Middle earth, as if they

Held understory worlds,

Although lightless danger

Was all they really held.

The caves became stories

Of dreams and afterlives

And hells, chthonic dragons,

And deities of death,

So then what? In Belize,

The Maya seem to have

Re-enacted stories

Made up to explain caves

In caves to reinstate

What was slipping away—

Real caves, myths about caves,

Real enactments of myths

In the caves, with real deaths.

Why would you think this while

Some thunder grumbles, while

The lightning holds its breath?