By Charles M. Sumid     Copyright 2025     Written 2013

Forty feet underground,
the guide kills her flashlight.

My eyes reach for light
that isn’t there.

Then, the faintest glow.
Ochre and umber handprints
appearing like stars
from a daylight sky.

The paintings emerge
not because darkness leaves
but because eyes learn
to see differently.

These hands pressed here
thirty thousand years ago.
Between each torch-lit moment,
centuries of darkness
holding images like seeds.

Someone hums.

A low note finds
the chamber’s resonance.
The cave joins in,
harmonizing from a thousand
throats of stone.

When we exit,
blinking in afternoon assault,
I carry darkness
not in my eyes
but in my bones,
where it hums the song
the cave remembers.