The guide throws a switch inside the cave,
spotlights illuminate rock walls.
It’s a symphony of fluoresce white.
From the ceiling, birds nest stalactites hang
and rimstone dams flow beneath moonmilk crystals.
I inhale the damp cavern air.
The guide tells us the delicate paper thin tubes
can not bear the human touch.
All this magnificence, he says,
is formed by the simplicity of groundwater
seeping down from the earth’s surface,
dissolving minerals through accepting limestone.
But I want to send a word
to echo off the quartz formations,
to question God’s work—
ask why create such elegance in the dark,
hidden and unseen,
for hundred of thousands of years?
Then, as if to answer my thought
something like a portent or a premonition
starts to form inside my mind
cut from the deepest part of my unknowing.
