The Earth Waits for You
by John Brantingham
You have to be careful after you drive
all those miles of deeply rutted dirt roads
into the California desert valleys to get back
to the old mines that were abandoned by people
desperate enough to walk into the Mojave
100 years ago. They’re far back enough
that the government hasn’t fenced them off,
so you can still climb down into the dark
with your little flashlight to see what once was,
and these holes spike down into the crust,
and they have their own kind of beauty
filled with echoes and bats that cluster
on the ceiling and move together as one
in their sleep, only a single guardian, still awake.
You have to be careful of trapped gasses
and explosives too heavy to carry out so left behind.
You have to be careful about crumbling posts.
Maybe, the earth shouldn’t be entered any longer.
Maybe the fissures we’ve left.
It waits for the moment when it can collapse,
swallowing you and your every memory
of the world above.
all those miles of deeply rutted dirt roads
into the California desert valleys to get back
to the old mines that were abandoned by people
desperate enough to walk into the Mojave
100 years ago. They’re far back enough
that the government hasn’t fenced them off,
so you can still climb down into the dark
with your little flashlight to see what once was,
and these holes spike down into the crust,
and they have their own kind of beauty
filled with echoes and bats that cluster
on the ceiling and move together as one
in their sleep, only a single guardian, still awake.
You have to be careful of trapped gasses
and explosives too heavy to carry out so left behind.
You have to be careful about crumbling posts.
Maybe, the earth shouldn’t be entered any longer.
Maybe the fissures we’ve left.
It waits for the moment when it can collapse,
swallowing you and your every memory
of the world above.
John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including his latest, Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). He lives in Jamestown, New York.