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THINGS OF A COLOR

(I went in.)
It was blacker than night,
more like the afternoon of an eclipse,
there in the back of the cave.
The dark was as huge and stark
as a wide ivory grin
in a black man's face:
I felt like an ant crawling
in the barrel of a .44,
or perhaps,
feet slipping on the wet stones,
more like Jonah sliding on the tongue
of the great fish.
The silence of the cave
was filled by the sounds of imagination _
the insistent beat of Joseph Conrad's heart,
the rhythm of Art Tatum's fingers striking sharps and flats,
avoiding the natural.
Spooky.

(I got out.)

Michael Terry

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