Jesse and Frank James were
killers of men.
They put many men in the
ground.
Robbing banks and trains with
their gang
They gunned many good men
down.
Jesse, Frank, and their gang
left Kansas
Riding hard south and west
away
Until deep in Indian
Territory
They rode up onto a cave,
Black holes down into the
earth
Deep
and narrow as a killer's
sin,
Sunless
and chill as a
killer's heart
Glorying in evil and ruin.
The waters are deep and black
in the cave
That we know now as Jester.
Its
deep mud doesn't let go
easily
And
doesn't welcome a killer.
Frank and the gang are asleep
On a pile of jagged breakdown
rock,
Lain down to sleep like the
dead
While a guard keeps watch.
All but Jesse who carves with
his knife
Into the soft gypsum stone
'Jesse
James' while outside
Winds gust, rage, and moan
And black stormclouds writhe
and seethe,
Rain falling furious as the
bullets
That Jesse and Frank have
shot into banks
And into the hearts of
innocents.
The waters rise as quickly as
evil thoughts.
Jesse and Frank and their
gang run hard.
But
they've gone deep into
the cave
And the closest way out is
far.
With every step they sink
deeper into mud;
The
water's now up to their
thighs.
But
they see a sinkhole's dim
glow
Lit by lightening glowing
down its sides.
They push against the angry
flood waters
As they fight to climb up and
out,
Water raging at them so
furiously
They
can't hear each other
shout.
The water rips clothes and
skin away.
It pulls off their holsters
and guns.
By the time they climb up and
out
They're lucky water's
not in
their lungs.
Little
is left of the name 'Jesse'
Once cut with a knife into
the gypsum wall.
The
waters of Jester have
worn it away—
You can barely see it at all.
The waters are deep and black
in the cave
That we know now as Jester.
That cave is six miles long
And nowhere welcomes a
killer.
1997
Back in 1901 in northwestern
Oklahoma
Over lonely miles between
distant ranches
A caver from the
limestone-caving east
Rode over barren gypsum cave
ridges.
He saw the gaping mouths of
gypsum caves
Plentiful as flowers blooming
in the sun
But only opening fully under
a full moon
When
they swallow night's
oblivion.
At the beginning of a new
century
When the old pagan darkness
Of
common folks' superstitions and fears
Would be washed away by
Progress
He decided to explore the
caves by himself,
Casting aside thoughts of
danger and threat
That
he wouldn't fall, that
no rock would hit him,
That no rains flood the cave,
that all would be right.
Into a gypsum grotto he
crawled then stood
To marvel at its pale white
walls and ceilings,
Stone pendants hanging by the
dozens,
Tiger salamanders scurrying,
bats circling,
Soda straw clusters, rimstone
dams, flowstone
Each polished smoothly as a
precious gem.
On and on he went ever deeper
down
To
the lowest level—a
wet, winding canyon.
Suddenly claws clutch him in
the darkness
From a deep pit beneath an
undercut shelf.
His face splits and his
sternum cracks apart
Easily as we crack open a
pecan shell.
Until its last drop falls and
hisses
And complete darkness hides
the crime
All that is left of him there
Is his carbide lamp burning
dim
As the last drop of this
thickening blood
Trickles from his severed
heart.
As he remembers his wife and
children
His lamp becomes dry and
dark.
The cave ogre that feasts had
lived there,
Last
of its kind, since the
Civil War's ruin.
But no larger meal had it
ever feasted upon,
No crayfish or bat, no fish
or raccoon,
Until today as it eats its
hungry fill
And drinks all it wants from
a skull-cup
Torn out of the same meat
That the gorged ogre drops
into its lap.
Then
from the caver's ribcage
it makes a fiddle,
From his fingers it makes
pegs for tuning,
From his chin it makes the
bridge,
From his veins it makes the
strings.
It scratches and scrapes the
strings
Because they have yet to be
rosined.
So
into the lone caver's
blood he dips
The
left arm that's his bow
and, inspired,
After midnight plays strange
melodies
And
harmonies that no one's
ever before heard.
No two phrases the same, no
two rhythms,
Lonely, angry, threatening--music
to be feared.
Explorers of that cave in
following years
Fled before onrushing night
trapped them
On fields that became suddenly
grim
In the darkness that surged
behind them.
But when they left the cave
too late
They shivered to the music
they barely heard
And staggered out to never
cave again
And some to never live
outside an asylum ward.
During World War Two when
warplanes
Glowed
like butcher's knives
overhead
And evil watered the world
like rain
The ogre fell sick, silent,
and dead.
No more music from that grim
abyss
Oozes up to the ghost-white
moon.
Shattered and strewn, the
bones of the lone caver
Have disappeared beneath red
flowstone
And
the ogre's fiddle has
fallen apart
To become cave with its maker.
1999
Steve Beleu,
