There’s something about painting caves
people don’t seem to remember
nowadays. Secrets in the dark press history through stone,
absorbing moments, loves, cultures — feeding
them back to us with the seep of minerals
in a trickle of ancient water about our feet,
and back into a world that has moved on.
The red walls have a strange glow
when you think of the hands that crushed each berry,
moulded the paste, the paint, with fingers and bones,
and carved an image in the gloom.
Firelight, flickering.
A deer might fly inside a cave,
a hunter might throw his spear and watch it sail
for a millennia (or longer), a woman washes and cooks,
waiting for love, birds are grounded
like shadows tangled to their makers,
and even the sun can set in the north, frozen
there, as if to prove it can.
Rocks furred with moss clench at the tide
that tangles itself between the caverns
like drenches of dark hair. Fish and tiny things weave
and pass by the paintings, minds unbent
around their meanings as they’re warbled
with refraction. Slant
figures stoop
and become old,
mirrored alongside younger selves and more
honest smiles, like hoping too hard
dissolves simply being.
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