In the cave, our histories are shadows

on a wall; our memories rote lessons

that flicker and mutate. Fall and spring,

then and now, captured and interchanged.

Friezes like post cards sculpted to ornament

the grotto, endure, resist decay.

When the shadows dance, we point, open

our mouths, as if for a split second, something

shifts, recalibrates. A glimpse of fire and lathe –

and shadow makers. Forms beyond hope.

Ideas like sirens singing. Cracks in a wall

that luminate, hint at another source: rivers,

flora and bursts of color, starlings with iridescent

wings, shrubs whose roots finger through mud

for something to drink. A world too fluid to dangle

from rod and string. How could we want its ranges, moon,

its chorus marking dawn, its feathered swirl confusing

predators, its messenger’s glad song? Why should we

mind the tether anchoring us; the flame that fixes seasons,

stages night and day, that orients us frontward, ever

frontward, and keeps the constellations in their place?