THE ROCK CAVE (A Dream)

 

  Inexplicably, the world is exploding

  And I alone, survive in the rock cave.

  I fear a meteor collided this morning

  When I’d gone subterranean

  Spalunking and befriending the rock.

  I wonder,

 Did a barrage of hostile hydrogen bombs hit today?

  I cling now to a small chamber within the rock

  Next to an immense natural shaft

  That drops perhaps one hundred stories down

  Into the deep cavernous abyss.  

 

By some freak law of physics or gravity,

All is witnessed from my hidden window of cave rock.

I watch intense shock waves

Radiate in a wicked surge of power

Like an angry ocean bursting through a subway tunnel.

 

I now realize that only I am safe

And untouched in the rock cave.

The earth’s surface

Has been otherwise rendered

Null and void.

I cling to this cave now,

As Earth’s sole surviving son.

 

No other life form now exists,

Either outside or inside the rock cave.

The cave has become my mother, and

I huddle in the jagged crevasse of her heat.

 

In less than a moment

I have completely grieved

the endpoint of all previous life forms, save I.

I sense tremendous love and freedom

In the black loam and roughened cool

Of vibrant, inorganic matter.

 

The rock is some higher intelligence

And I now remember (as could we all)

Its former presence, like a kind nursemaid

In our original  lifetimes.

 

I do not cling to organic life now,

But feel warm and comforting ties

To all the stars of all the galaxies.

We are brothers and sisters.

                                              

                                                     1995