- Dead Cave
- Cactus, Mesqite, Red Dirt
- Gypsum Caving Bagtelles - 6
- Prayer that we do not blunder into The Cave of Death
Driving
up the “Northwest Passage”
To caves beneath the gypsum hills
Only the cedar trees are green--
The harvested fields are dry, brown;
The other trees, bare branches.
Seasons
come and go, hot, cold;
People come and go, happy, sad.
These caves seem always the same,
Temperatures always the same,
Growing wider and deeper,
Filling with mud and gravel,
Collapsing into breakdown.
But where
there was once a cave
Now there’s a shallow valley.
We stand in it and speculate--
What was it like to cave here?
Mesquite
and cactus compete in these red hills,
Colonizing the low areas first then working
From the base of the hills to their flat tops
As sprawling forests of mesquite and cactus
Attempt to overwhelm and choke each other.
Not even
red cedars have made a foothold here
Although their steady march everywhere else
Seems to pull our red dirt itself out of the ground
Up into and through their widely spreading branches.
Between
battalions of cactus and mesquite
That struggle to encircle and annihilate each other
Are red sandstones and clay and petrified wood.
In the creek beds, dry now and dry most months,
Bones of mastodons are carved from the red soil
After eons of erosion. And here beneath our feet
Is what we search for: sinkholes leading down
Beneath these ridges topped by white gypsum
Winding and spiraling down underneath our feet.
Soon we will be there beneath this quiet struggle.
There we will be warm enough in the cold winter
And cool enough during the hottest summer.
CaSO4 2H2O = = Ca2+ + SO42- + 2H2
Without
this process that dissolves gypsum
We’d go caving and find only erosion,
Nothing to crawl into through water, through mud,
Over gravel, over quills and mesquite and cactus buds
That
we notice only after we’re already impaled
And curses to our fellow cavers we’ve yelled
As our introduction and warning to a new cave.
Without gypsum dissolution this much fun we can’t have!
So remember
this formula well, for we gypsum cavers
Salivate when we find a sinkhole that opens into new wonders
That we push ourselves into and crawl and dig through
Even if we exit wet and mud-encased and frozen blue.
“ You found a new sinkhole? Let’s go!” And we do!
Prayer that we do not blunder into The Cave of Death
Protect
us, O Jesus, O Vishnu, O Buddha
From stumbling into The Cave of the Dead!
Let us not blunder into that great chasm
That plummets down to The Land of the Dead!
Let us
not be so unlucky as to fall into
That sacred and terrifying cave down
To The Place of No Place where souls
Trudge in continuous circling steps
Around
the pillar up to everlasting life
Awaiting Judgement’s call to climb it
And leap up from its polished apex
Into the clouds of eternity above them.
Let us
content ourselves to cave here
In these caves that are lesser caves
But echoes of the great cave
That connects our existences and lives.
There
we would walk 100 feet down
And find ourselves 1,000 feet deep;
Then we would walk another 10 feet
And find ourselves suddenly there in
Nowhere
that is everywhere and everywhere
That is Nothing, walking continuously, circling,
Eyes always pushed up, expectant,
Hearts and souls awaiting the moment of grace
In which
we leap up and climb and climb
Over the centuries and seconds of our lives
Reflected in the smoothly shining surface
Of the pillar that we ascend with joy.
Let us
be happy in our shallow gypsum caves
20, 30, 40 feet below the surface,
Content to crawl along in the mud
Knowing we’ll return late in the afternoon
To the
warm sun of life or chill evening
But not so chill as The Cave of the Dead
Where the shuffling feet of the penitents
Cause the ground to continuously rumble.
Steve Beleu,
