Hi Arthur,
Maybe I shouldn't comment - cos I feel I'm probably saying what I said to
the previous draft...
but this does seem excessively wordy.
I'm also thinking one of the differences between this style, and a style
that gets used in much contemporary literature about sport in the hills (and
under them!) is the length of sentences. Shorter sentences have a place in
people's writing, they can heighten, accentuate, the drama.
Bob


>From: Arthur Seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Sub: The speleologist
>Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 15:20:53 -0000
>
>
>                              The Speleologist.
>
>
>
>                Once well inside, beyond the first drop, where I spun like
>a spider on a twisting rope over a welter of spray that twinkled down into
>the emptiness below, the entrance and the day are long lost. I turn off my
>light and let the darkness tighten over my face; taste the acids of
>terror, harsh in my throat.
>
>                Boots chime on rock.
>
>                Purity of the absolute.
>
>                Echoes peal and crowd.
>
>                My senses reach out into the cave; hear the stream in the
>blackness, the beast-lick of waters lap and twist past; cold, hard aching
>cold, shaping the cave around me. Here it is tomb-dark, my hand before my
>face and wide blind eyes, feels the unseen rock. Soft life that once teemed
>in ancient oceans and turned to the light, changed now and locked there,
>hard. Water through dark ways dissolves and re-lays, renews ripples of pale
>limestone.
>
>                The huge mass of the fells pins me, treads me underfoot, as
>I slither like a lizard through the thin mud; taste the grit and ooze of
>earth on my lips; crunch coarse sand in my teeth. A pitch that will not go,
>a way that pinches off, narrows in womb-tight, holds me by the hips. A
>stone rose blooms under my searching fingers; blood on my knuckles a warm
>salt suck.
>
>                Cold, wet and the hardness press upon me as I lay and know
>the pulse of the cave's heart where time and water transpose, unravel and
>fold newness in. The bowels of the earth drain and replenish.
>
>                I turn 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 slow day closes
>
>                                        in moist greyness and warm winds
>
>                                        an owl unfolds.
>

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