Unprime Rimes - October 2006

The Cave of Grim Return


There were three cavers who drove out west
To crawl into a cave down a sinkhole
But as they left the world of light behind
None of them knew how distant they'd go.

Down through the sinkhole they crawled
Until they could stand up like a man
Inside that cave and stare at rooms
Of white gypsum and measure their span.

But as they looked they gasped, mouths agape:
Every wall, ceiling, and floor was moonless-black-
But gypsum is not black, and the cave
Swallowed their light in its angry grasp

And fell away at their feet and fell deep
And more sprawling than they could make out.
So they turned around to find their way back
But recognized nothing and no escape out.

Hours they searched, then three days, and then
Down they sank in despair to sleep and rest.
“We may never leave this unending cave-
If a cave at all and not an unblessed

Hall of Hell; may our souls find mercy.”
“We'd know if we had crossed over
The unforgiving underground river Styx
That separates death from life-this is some other

Being neither death nor life nor between.
I feel no hunger or thirst, but know
We ran out of food and water our 1st day
And haven't slept since, but aren't sleepy, so no,

This isn't the world beneath sweet life
But a suspension of every state of being,
The negation of both cave and non-cave.
Here everything is Not-this is Nothing.”

Suddenly a weak beam of sunlight lit 
A tortured crawl winding up and out
And rejoicing they hurried to it and through it
And came out at sunset to look about.

But their cars were gone-only long-rusted
Scrap metal crackled beneath their boots
As they hiked to the landowner's house
To discover it in ruins. Confused, mute,

They hitched a ride to their homes.
But everyone they had left there young
Was old and could hardly remember
The cavers who'd been gone so long-

Some of their loved ones had died
And their children they didn't know
For they had been lost in Nothing
And life had flowed past them long ago.

“Did we actually ever leave that cave
That is the antithesis of existence?
We were there-are we there now
And all this is a luminescence

Whose lights and colors are a mirage?
Did Nothing held us for so long
We can't find an escape from its lair
To return to the world where we belong?”

Their families hardly recognized them
For they had aged only one day
Though the world around them had gone
Through many cycles of growth and decay.

But not them-they alone were spared
And alone had been taken by Nothing
That suspended life and death within them
Until they returned home, and Nothing

Went with them as they went to bed with beloved
But slept like soldiers half-dead from exhaustion.
When they awoke their lovers knew them again
Because they awoke old, but free from the prison

That preserves life from living and dying
While suspended in The Cave of Nothing.
Steve Beleu, Central Oklahoma Grotto - Posted Oct. 2006

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