A young girl sat down beside
a cave entrance
And upon her thin knee sat
a babe new born.
Though the mother was almost
a child herself
She was not too young to
know the scorn
Of the man who’d used
and abandoned her.
But it was no man who’d
bred her young.
She had returned to where
she’d
met
The creature from the cave
who had sung
And she had fallen in love
with that vision,
And wonder led to embrace,
and embrace
To a babe born too soon
for the human race—
And half- what do we call
it? A wonder
That seemed to be a salamander
But could shrink itself
or expand
The girl and now embraced
his son,
And as the mother cursed
and cried
Took its young and was
gone
To brag to its kind about
the birth
Of his son who was half-man
And half-salamander: cavespawn.
The road led up the mountainside
To abandoned mines’ timbers and
debris
Strewn across the ragged slopes
Of boulders, tailings, and scree.
The road had almost become nature
again
And almost turned back to hard stone,
And on that winding path a woman
Too old to be there wandered alone.
“ Oh
where are you hid, my darling
son,
Where in this hell on earth,
my demon spawn?”
As she kept walking on unsteady legs
She looked down into the fearful
deep shafts
And between boulders large as manor
houses
But could nowhere find, not even
with witchcraft,
Her evil son, the spawn of the demon
She had danced naked with on Halloween
When they’d whirled about in
frantic spirals
And the world below them
couldn’t
be seen.
“ Oh
where are you hid, my darling
son,
Where in this hell on earth,
my demon spawn?”
Hid deep in her shawl was a sharp
blade
To take the life of
her mutant son—
Half-human, half-demon,
all sorrow—
To her an evil needing to be undone.
Of a sudden from a nearby mineshaft
She heard a sharp whistle, but without
tone,
That woke the dead in the cemetery
Where miners lay, graves unmarked
and unknown.
“ Oh
where are you hid, my darling
son,
Where in this hell on earth,
my demon spawn?”
There it was, her son, cringing in
an entrance
To the deepest mine there and most
dangerous,
A mine that had killed many, and
many still there
Were buried beneath tons of rock
and talus.
“ There you are, my frightened son.
Why hide in that hole to hell, my demon
spawn?”
“ Because
I read your mind, my mother,
And know you’ve come
to kill me
With the dirk hid in your shawl.
I’ll here stay as long as you
imperil me.”
“ There
you hide, my frightened son,
Helpless in that hellpit, my
demon spawn…”
“ If
you would murder me, my mother,
Follow me down into this mineshaft
That pierces deep and wide the earth,
Follow me there to do your evil craft,
For
almost on that mineshaft’s
deep floor
Through a hole no larger than a fist
A cave opens 1/3rd this mountain’s
size
Unknown to all but the magick
of the occultist.”
“ Why
do you not step first, my frightening
son,
Into this hellhole, my demon
spawn?”
Witch and son had already passed through
The hole no larger than an angry, clenched
fist
And into a cave vast and sulphurous
Then even deeper into that vast abyss.
“ Just
a few feet further, my murderous
mother,
And you can drink my
blood and become stronger.”
Then in front of the witch her son
vanished
Like morning fog dissolving in sunlight.
But she could no longer see anything
And staggered lost in eternal night.
“ Oh
where are you hid, my darling
son,
Where in this hell under earth,
my demon spawn?”
“ Just a few feet further, my murderous
mother,
And you can drain
my blood and become
strong.”
“ Without
the light you made shine bright
From your glaring red eyes
I am blind.”
Tripping across a rimstone dam she
fell
Down a jagged rock slope and whined
As she held her twisted ankle and lay
in water
Cold as human
evil—but
evil not human.
“ Oh where have you hid, my darling son?
I repent that I came to murder you,
my half-demon,
Half-human,
though I need your warm blood
To bathe in
and make myself
young once
more
And I need
your flesh
to cook and
feast upon
To regain my
strength and
my 6th sense
to restore.
So I came to
claim you,
my darling
demon spawn
Sired by
a lesser
devil—or
perhaps more
than one
That night
on The Mountain
of Doom
When we witches
cavorted naked
until dawn
With
creatures from The
Place of
Grief—
Oh why
so deep
into
this cave,
my damned
son?”
“ To leave you here forever, lost and
alone,
And return
to my home
above, as
good as
human.
But
I’ll
be back
in one-hundred
years
To find your
calcite-covered
bones
And I’ll
juggle
with
them
and
reminisce
About
the day
the
witch
came
to kill
her son.”
“ Oh
where are you now, my darling
son,
Where in this hell under earth,
my demon
spawn?”
No one answered
her; her voice
echoed back
1,000 times
from the cold
limestone walls.
As she listened
all she heard
was the dripping
Of water from
stalactites
and waterfalls.
“ May
you rot in this hell, my demon
spawn.
It
is my
right to
claim your
life, my
evil one.”
But as days
became weeks
and months
Insanity claimed
her as a slave
of its kingdom.
Steve Beleu
February 14, 2007
Central Oklahoma Grotto
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No rock at all
But a mineral,
Gypsum’s no rock aggregate
But a sulfate
Formed by inorganic processes
And deposited in thin traces
Of strata 1,500 meters thick
In the Permian Basin
Where an shallow ocean
Of water’s transforming magic
Created caves in it
10 to 20 times faster
Than caves of limestone,
Sculpting passage and dome
Beneath arid dirt.
If you break gypsum apart
It splits into four planes,
One of them perfect.
Its softness ranks 2 out of
10
And its color depends—
Though crystals are transparent
Stone can be white, grey,
pink, red,
Brown, blue, pale yellow,
or rare black.
Cavers
who don’t respect gypsum
Cave in their own ignorance.
The short-lived gypsum cave
Is a blossom in spring’s grove
Suddenly come and soon gone.
Gypsum
caves are phreatic—
Water dissolving up from
below—
Or vadose—water
dissolving
Soft gypsum from high to
low.
Gypsum spleothems are numerous,
Created through miniscule
cracks
Or deposited across the stone
surface.
Crystals, coral, powder,
popcorn,
Drapery, rimstone dams,
flowers—
All these and more, and more
Not yet found, and many never
To be found. Passages can
be
Round and smooth as a canvas
Not yet painted by the force
of water
That shapes every form
on this planet—
For only by water are caves
born
And by water their speleothems
That decorate the world below
the world.
Though
limestone’s
millions of years
Allows for vast, massive development
That perseveres for eons, gypsum
caves
Are short-lived, and 100,000 years
is old.
But beauty unexpected and sudden
can gleam
From gypsum caves more astonishing!
The depth of gypsum caves is less
And their length is less
Than long and deep limestone.
But a sudden gleaming, luminous
For only a moment is also rapturous
Next to the stone beside it, impressive
In its sudden brief beauty.
Gypsum caves have many entrances
Unlike the one or two of limestone.
So we enter and leave them as easily
As the winds that blow into and
through them
And easily as the
rains that can flood
them—
But not while we’re
there, entranced,
Exploring, surveying, mapping,
eyes agape
At every foot of gypsum sulfate.
Cavers
who don’t love gypsum
Cave in the abysmal chasms
Not of limestone but of their hearts
Closed to the simple beauty of
the blossoms
Brief and soon gone of gypsum.
S Beleu, February 23, 2007
