Blue Grass Cave -- A Poem

Blue Grass Cave

By: Lance S. Barron

Ordovician waves pounded shells into sand.

Strophomenids, Rafinesquinas –

Some resupinate; others not.

Laying quiet, squeezed: limestone.

Uplift along the arch: Cincinnati.

Slowly eroding, slowly dissolving,

Younger rocks washed away to sea,

Creating the Blue Grass.

Calcium carbonate in solution.

Carbonic acid in limestone attack,

For eons, ions dissolve away,

Enlarging a small, incipient crack.

Individual holes lined up in passages.

Not tubular, ragged. Fractal.

Not fractured, eroded, corroded,

By the Blue Grass rain.

As a cave, not so much.

Well house over farm sink.

Thesis cave for M.S.

Inner Blue Grass Karst.

Mapping with Silva Ranger.

Wet belly flop: Goes. Small.

Flowstone, fish, fluorite vein.

Has it all: Blue Grass cave.

Knee deep. Knee deep on Who?

That's Whom.

Green leaves in mud on the ceiling.

Roving Blue Grass death storms.

Thirty-foot cable ladder,

On belay: Goldline.

Beer in the cooler up top.

Wouldn't fool an old man,

Would you?

Note: An earlier version of this poem appeared in Illuminations Issue No. 26, June 2017, a publication of the NSS Arts & Letters Section.

Welcome to the resurrection of this blog, long off line. From time to time, posts will appear about Mammoth Cave, writing, flowers, and other interesting things.

On September 23, 2017, we will be at Pages in the Cave at the Cave City Convention Center from 10:30 to 2:30 with Dark Are the Steps of Time along with a bunch of other writers. That Saturday night, we will be at the banquet at the Convention Center. There is no entry fee, and there will be numerous raffles plus swag bags, etc. VIP tickets for the banquet and early entry on Saturday morning cost $25.00 per person.

This is a photograph of the bookshelf in the Eastern National store in the visitor center at Mammoth Cave National Park.

While you're in the area, take a cave tour!