“Caving”
When invited downstairs, the vanity of limestone cheeks would prefer us to respect the effort of eons of their sifting through waste—fish bone, shell shard and coral—for the purest of substances. And while the end product clogs their pores, they still gladly bemoan the wrinkles that melt like waxen tears down stalagmite candles to us passersby, shaped loosely by a helmet’s light. And I if in kinship, I pressed my smooth palm against them, it would only draw blood because it’s the only grateful thank you offered by a narcissist, I thought while holding tightly onto my loose shape. For down here, the contemplation of self belongs wholly to those earthen maws. And if I were to meditate on my breath, my own steam in the deep, they would still make it about themselves: “How can your breath hang so transiently upon us like a puff?” And it’s their choice—to discard it or pat it flat into the powders of their made-up caverns, and I can’t be bothered with it. Because we passersby can make a moment selfish, too, for you, a stranger, someone among us (who?) no matter now. Your self-made day, a birthday, that’s selfless because of the vagueness of our forms as inhumans illumined by glowworms and light bulbs. And later, above, bedazzled and clear- sighted again, we’ll disappoint the fashionable beliefs of the smug stones when all we’ll recall of our journey is your party, which was so far down the guests might not have had limbs or noses. And the birthday person? There might have been a visage that might have been a Dixie cup filled with lemon drink although I do recall my mouth full of the chewiness of chocolate and marshmallow.
by Sarah Dzida (2005)
Author’s Note: I wrote this poem while in New Zealand where I explored the Waitomo caves. At the end of the trip which was about 80 meters down, we snacked and toasted one of the group for their birthday.