Title: cavern
Form: Kyrielle (a French form of rhyming poetry written in quatrains; 8 syllables per line; three quatrain minimum; each quatrain contains a repeating line or phrase as a refrain)

Note: When I was a kid, I went to a summer camp that took us through wild caves in my home state. Beauty Cave is one of the largest, with some amazing formations that you can only see after a four-hour hike. btw, in speleology, "breakdown" refers to heaps of debris on the cave floor.


we were old hands, blase tourists
by the time we went to beauty
mud-stained, battered knees and bruised wrists
from the long crawls in the darkness

helmets dented from the ceilings
by the time we went to beauty
exercised beyond our feelings
of wonder at this dank wildness

and yet. climbing past the breakdown
by the time we went to beauty
I gazed into a crack, far down
and glimpsed a meaning for timeless