The Cave

by Jenna K Funkhouser

“And first he will see the shadows best.” Plato

How close apocalypse feels

touching this stone.

Like every generation, I imagine the wars

and violence of my age an arrow

the fire-swept forests of my youth

a type. Strange how we tame fire

within these walls in beeswax,

gentle wick lapping up the night.

Strange and sorrow when I read

just after the day’s blessing

how more than fifty drowned

in desperate hope of another island’s shore.

A light rose this morning and touched

the earth so tenderly, the blue held my face

like a warm hand. Mist had cleared and little hills

on islands across the sea came near.

And I, forgive me, was glad.

Where, oh where,

is an apocalypse when you need one?

The fire and the wars have come

begging for justice.

The sea is a glittering sapphire,

just as he said,

but it’s hiding its hungry mouth.

When will this gladness be more

than a shadow on the wall of a cave?

How can the earth be so beautiful

and so silent?

-

Let’s say this another way.

Perhaps we know too much.

And yet we never know enough;

for to know requires more than sight -

it asks love.

Only lovers know

what death means, what life means

and I, I am ignorant.

I watch men enter the cave

and prostrate themselves in tenderness.

I watch women glide with lit candles

and kiss the stones in desire.

The bells clamor and the pitch rises.

I know I must choose to join them

or remain outside of what they seek.

I must love, or I will never know.

-

So we come again to locality

to this man, this Friday at ten o’clock,

this island. This cave. We bind ourselves

to the particular with joy

abandoning the possible for the actual

loving the actual for the potential.

Loving the shadows for the cave.

And if the world ends

with a whimper

it will be the dogwood

cradling the moonlit sky

in its arms

the blue moth

whispering its wings

to the wild, thorn-twisted rose

the infant on the chest of its mother

   the grandmothers stringing their stories

   like beads around our craning necks

the quiet self-offering of a friend.

It will be the mercies so small

we don’t realize

they are saving us

   so silently

   so still.

Even our griefs and woundings

are a kind of prayer

if you let them

Even the angels sometimes hid

their faces

So as to not become calloused

to the wild apocalypse of love.

---

Jenna K Funkhouser is a Pacific Northwest based storyteller and poet. Her poetry has been published by The Ekphrastic Review, As It Ought To Be, Ekstasis, and Spiritus Journal, and is forthcoming at The Penwood Review, among others. Her second book of poetry, Bright Inhabited Lives, was published by Kelsay Books in June 2024.