the way to silence

a very noisy clock
in this room
 louder than the cars
on the highway

and the dark
it whines a tune
 like static
electricity

my body
petitioning me
 on all its old aches
and concerns

sitting.

chuckles rising
 alongside farts
 reeking with the absurdity
of my condition

Bungonia

i took a pen and paper
to take things down
but fell a fast asleep
into the long night drink
spinning onto the dark tack
like a water boatman
chalking the surface
with rippled moonlight

i was going to write
about Bungonia
the state's oldest recreation
area--a stamp of bush
argyle apple and peppermint
their soft caramel bark
and silver leaf melodies
pouring into a gorge
of grass trees
and limestone faces
conversing around a bend of sand

but i lay there under those trees
and slept instead
and the holy ground there it drinks
it steals the rivulets
deep into the soil
where yellow caverns
make foul aired tombs
and domed chambers to decay
the final vestiges
of visitors from upstairs

like us (me and my three boys)
with head torches
breathing hard that morning
as we corkscrew down a crack
and land with the detritus
washed down in a rainfall
among lost bugs and white bones
or wood that's grown a white beard
the modern corpses of the daylight
returned to Precambrian silence

the Earth here is drinking deeply
taking down the bruised bodies
of the sun's creation
inhaling all his creatures
she digests them all
into a profound slime
mysteriously deep, beyond
where even well-equipped cavers go
the dark dreamy water lost
somewhere between absorption
and an eternal efflux

but she didn't get us
we chimneyed out
and lay on flat rocks
warming ourselves like dinosaurs
plucked out of the mud
my son lost a wobbly tooth
and i restored with this pen
a memory from oblivion
to withhold it for a day
or a week or even ten years
or a century from the night
but never forever