Caves below the mountaintops and in our lives

Some of us went right up
to the mouth of the cave,
It was a long walk through
the hottest part of the day,
and someone imagined
pools of blue cave water
lit by uranium as the sun
lingered in the west
like a bad penny. This was
where some turned back,
where others hung back
smoking Marlboros, picking
at the nearest rocks for fossils.
I tell you we were there
watching as the climbers
pulled themselves over
the lip, into the darkness.

Of course, a few returned with tales
and some didn't come back
at all. Someone with a lantern
thought she found petroglyphs
at the far junction in the main cave,
someone with a geologist’s hammer
brought back handfuls of staurolite.
Even after it was found out
it was the devil lighting
the far end of the trail, the dirty
plaintive woods and even
the rocks themselves--I am
no longer anxious to cross
and am rightly ashamed
of the time I left you all there
so I could wander the far eastern
meadows below the peak
where ladybugs grew by the thousands
on granite outcrops warmed
by the summer sun.