Living Cave
Given moisture
and time, even limestone
oozes like squeezed fruit
or hot candles
into stalactites,
that hard rock dripping
like summer off
a wet bathing suit
into puddled stone,
that rigid ceiling
reaching down
like melting
scoops over the cone,
or clumping along
the walls and ground
in karst-hard gobs,
though the shifting’s
so slow, loosening
just half an inch
per hundred years,
that our mammal eyes
can never watch
that budge within the rock.
*
Lisa Angelella’s poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Willow Springs, Tar River Poetry, Rust+Moth and Stoneboat. She teaches English at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa.
