Under a smoke-blue sky, to a cave wet and ancient
With Roman waters tickling from the tops of a
collapsed aqueduct
And the Roman foot I could feel on top of mine
Leading me to the colliding rock-falls of canyons
And the secret water-smelling flies of the hot
country
To copulate in the cool and shade; each foot-fall
Drove them up like dust in battering rain, the
smell
Of damp and rot and of new deaths and new births;
A fly landed on my hand and crapped a pile
Of worms; a fly nuzzled in my ear; a thousand flies
Turned and rubbed their wings and front feelers
Making a low hum as if an engine were working
Remotely under the earth, and echoing through a
thousand
Chambers till at last to the surface a mere echo of
echoes
Reverberating as enormous as sky or like the light
from stars
Or like still the moving moon that paces with a car
Delighting and subduing children to quiet and
wondering
Why the moon stands still but chases through the
stars.
-Christopher
Ketcham