Visit the underground at dVerse to join in.
amaranthine
manmade stairs
to subterranean cave
damp shroud
of chilled darkness
farther
into the lava tube
murmurs molder
extinguishing light
I present alone
echoes consumed by
volcanic sarcophagi
end 5/23/2017
Sascha Darlington
Based on a visit to Lava Beds National Monument located in northeastern California.
BTW, your color choices make it very hard for my eyes to read and thus find comments and more.
Someone else wrote about lava tubes — fun. I had not heard of them before this. thanx.
Thank you for letting me know, Sabio. The color scheme was a recent change. I’ll probably have to reconsider.
I appreciate your reading and commenting as well. Lava tubes are very interesting; great natural history.
Interesting to hear about the lava beds………very cool.
They were. Like entering another world.
I liked the thought of the echoes “consumed” by the volcanic “sarcophagi”.
Thank you! 🙂
Oh this is a wonderful trip into the underground
Thank you! 🙂
“damp shroud
of chilled darkness
farther
into the lava tube”
oooooh. unique take on underground! nicely done!
Thank you! 🙂
you’re welcome! 🙂
A great descent poem. The sense of isolation at the end is strong. For what it’s worth the colour scheme works perfectly on my pc.
Thank you, Paul! 🙂
Ah, and here I am with my hot cup of morning coffee and enjoying another trip into a lava tube! You’re right….who would have ever thought that two people would write about lava tubes on one prompt??? We are foever lava-kin! I descended with you here…and I especially like the tought of the tube being the “sarcophagi”…. it is right? It’s the burial ground/tomb of the last remains of that one lava flow….and you’re right…when you’re in there, it feels like you’re entombed. We had about 6 people in our group on this excursion and one of them took one look at the entrance and said, “nope — I’m claustrophobic” and stayed in our vehicle. We’d also explored a lava tube in Volcano National Park in the Big Island (Hawaii) with a volcanologist we’d hired for a private tour. It was not as “rough” as this one in Iceland…and was used by many tourists and you could actually stand in most of it. This one was really rough, and quite a challenge to make our way in.
PS: colors work for me as well.
Hopefully there will be trips to Iceland and Hawaii in the somewhat near future. I’d love to see other lava caves. 🙂
I was fascinated with your lava tube experience as well as Lillian’s. Being a bit claustrophobic, I prefer just reading about them! Love that word “sarcophagi” !
Thanks for reading, Bev. The ones that I went into opened up into a big area that had more narrow tunnels going out from it.
I’m with you. If I had to squat or crawl, I’d probably just point the flashlight in and say: lookie there, isn’t that cool and the visit of that one would be done. 🙂
Murmmrs molder is a wonderful pivot line and contributes to the whole feel of it!
Thank you! 🙂