Cave Dwellers
I’ve carved a cave in the mountainside.
I’ve drilled for water, stocked provisions
to last a lifetime. The walls are smooth.
We can live here, love, safe from elements.
We’ll invent another love that can’t destroy.
We’ll make exquisite reproductions of our
selves, immortal on these walls.
And when
this sea that can’t support us is burned clean,
when the first new creatures crawl from it,
gasping for water, air, more wondrous and more
wild than earth’s first couple, they shall see
there were two before them: you and me.
Copyright Credit: A. Poulin, Jr., “Cave Dwellers,” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 2001 by the estate of A. Poulin, Jr. Used by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.
Source: Selected Poems (BOA Editions Ltd., 2001)