Caverns, Caves

Deep places 
Hollowed by nature
Or man-made
An inverse volcano
Bursting inward by
Drill-holes that
Bottom-out into sunless tunnels
Sarcophagi
Full of nothing but time
Burrowings into hills
Where rabbits, busy, multiply
All dark and deep
Traces of hands in Cheddar Gorge
The touch of thought flickering its walls
How the land is scarred
By the hole in the heart
By our propensity to dig
And extract
As we attempt to define progress
And loss as a hole in the ground
Skin black with the search for heat
Eyes bright with the search for gold
The silo deep underground
Constructed from fear
We dig up life like moles
Leave the rubbish of our century
Massing at our backs
As we haruspicate our own
Entrails and hope the past
Can teach us all we need to know.

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