Hi Arthur,
I find this a terrifying read! I feel the terror of the poor guy down there 
in the utter darkness when a more gradual darkness - which is less total - 
is all that's mentioned as happening over his head! I think I'll need a 
stiff drink before I go to bed tonight! - Or two, or three... enough to stop 
me dreaming! - and distractions enough from today not to recall what you've 
vividly described.
Speleologist is a canny word!!! But I feel this poem is more about Caving - 
a more personal, less high-faluting kind of word!
To me speleologist sounds too much a in-the-head kind of word and caving 
sounds more earthy, more bodily, more the kind of word guys like this would 
use when they talk about what they do.
Bob


>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: The speleologist
>Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 16:21:34 +0100
>
>The speleologist.
>
>
>
>Once well inside, down that first drop on twisting rope, spun like a spider 
>over a welter of spray that twinkled down and away from him into the 
>darkness below, when  the entrance and the day are long lost, his light 
>flickers and fails; the mask of darkness tightens over his face.
>
>
>
>boots chime on rock
>purity of  absolute
>echoes peal and crowd
>
>
>His senses reach out into the cave; hears the stream in the blackness, the 
>beast-lick of waters lap and twist past; cold, hard aching cold, shaping 
>the cave around him. Here it is tomb-dark, his hand before his face and 
>wide blind eyes, feels the unseen rock, ancient life locked there, once 
>teemed in lost oceans and turned to light, changed now and hard.
>
>
>
>water through dark ways
>
>melts and relays, renews
>
>ripples of pale silk
>
>
>
>The huge mass of the fells pins him, treads him underfoot, as he slithers 
>like a lizard through the thin mud; tastes the grit and ooze of earth on 
>his lips; crunches coarse sand in his teeth. A pitch that will not go, a 
>way that pinches off, narrows in womb-tight, holds him in its clenched 
>fist.
>
>
>
>a stone rose blooms
>under his searching fingers
>
>blood on his  knuckles
>
>
>
>The cold, the wet and the hardness press. He lies still and knows the suck 
>and pulse of the cave’s dark heart. Time and water transpose, unravel and 
>fold newness in.
>
>He listens to the bowels of the earth draining and replenishing, turns from 
>the depths towards the light and the air somewhere above moving over green 
>dales, fresh and bright with spring flowers under a wide sky.
>
>
>
>the day closes slowly
>
>in moist greyness and warm winds
>
>an owl unfolds

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