Transitional Chamber

walking through a

misty plain

sodden with saline grief

in a delirious

deteriorating state

falling onto

swollen knees

begging for relief

finally the

squidging soil

gave way

I sank into the

lamenting land

plunged through

voluminous vacant

chambers of

My echoing recanted past

Stalactites drip-feeding me

An elaborate escape plan

Do I dream or

does life now fold back

upon life

have I perchance to spy

a light

Eerie white apparition

floating in the

infinite black

growing, descending,

approaching as I reel

finally revealing

a cavern, massive but

finite

a hand takes hold

of mine

strength lent where

I terminally lack

carried and lifted

to the surface

on the curve of my

savior’s back

the sun dazzles my

eyes yet

Now, here I stand in

the light

K.B. Silver

One of my favorite things activities/trips is to visit natural caverns. I have been to many, and I visited Moaning Caverns, April 2024 for my anniversary. I'd already been to that particular site, and another nearby, Mercer Caverns in Murphey’s California.

The first Cave I visited was probably Meramac caverns in my home state of Missouri, a place where Saltpeter was mined since the 1700s, and hideout of famed outlaw Jesse James.

That or the Mark Twain Cave Complex, featured in the book Tom Sawyer as a hideout, located in Hannibal, Mo. Fiction mirroring history in a way, especially since the room in Meramac caverns containing Jesse James artifacts wouldn’t be discovered until the 1940s. The entire boyhood home of Samuel Clemens in Hannibal was a favorite of mine as a child. Statues of Tom and Becky and an animatronic Mark Twain lives there telling you facts about his life. I was a cave, literature, and history-obsessed autistic child, so I was in heaven! I went to both of these caves more than once on field trips and with family.

Living in Missouri, we, of course, made a trip, as some point out, to Silver Dollar City in Branson, where Marvel Cave and Talking Rocks Caverns reside. Missouri and the surrounding states like Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky have limestone bedrock in many areas, making it perfect for the natural development of Karst topography. Water dissolves areas of lower density and creates sinkholes, aquifers, or caves! The area around where I grew up was dotted with underground caves. One of our friends who lived in the rural woods even had one on their property we would go in and explore.

I visited Marengo Cave on a trip to Indiana. I’ve also been to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and Mystic Cave in Arkansas, which appears to be sold and possibly for sale. Too bad my pockets are a little light right now. I would run a cave attraction LOL. I can’t even remember the rest; I know there were more. Oddly enough, almost all the ones I remembered seem to start with M! What a strange coincidence.