Useless

Follow me down, raindrop, between cleft earth

Where roots in the chasm twist and writhe;

Come with me to caverns with neither light

Nor water.

Spade to sod I heaved the weedy ground,

Spit by spit split the turf, deeper down struck

Gravel and stone.

I scraped at it as if at the foundations of the world.

Useless.

I filled the hole again, tilled the surface.

In the night, brown earth found me in a dream, 

Unlocked the kingdom.

I fell into the dark, turning in hopeless free fall, 

Down through compacted rocks till the ceiling 

Of the underworld broke.

In crystal caves where sight is an act of imagining:

In a cathedral of reflection, lightless stonework shivered;

Blind upturned faces traced my impossible arc.

Daylight brought me home for memory to remind me:

In the earth’s dark furrows our forgotten ancestors 

Are condemned to wander. There is no Hell 

Except for that confused place of unremembering

And unremembered souls, perplexed, stumbling.

Useless.

Those who went before are given up so easily.

The fickleness of the living is to believe

Living is all that counts, living and our lonely selfishness.

Useless.

We cover our eyes, 

So much like theirs, 

Ourselves so much like them, 

Already forgotten.

© BH, 2016

---

Double-digging. It’s a slog when you neglect single-digging so long there’s no choice. I find letting the mind wander as you work dispels the sense of effort. I presume the aftermath of earthy toil, free-associative mental relaxation, engendered a space for this piece to form.

Then again, I have always had a sense of the troglodytic. I’ve read Jules Verne, of course, and even stumbled on an obscure short story on the theme by Leslie Mitchell. So, ancestors, underground places, traces left in the landscape and the soil, it’s all there, I suppose.