Skull Cave

Kevin’s dad dropped us off 

At the end of the road

So he could show us the Skull Cave

You have to know where to go 

In the sea of uluhe, ohia, wild orchids

How to look for the crumbled rock entrance

And climb way back where

the day’s warmth never reaches

And there on a rock shelf,          

some ancient skulls rested

We turned the flashlight off

There is a kind of dark

that exists inside caves

It’s not the dark you get 

when you close your eyes

or in your bed at night

when the lights are off

It is the total absence of light

You start to feel you are floating

In the centre of the Earth

or inside your own head

When we climbed back out

we waited to be picked up

We laid down on the hot, cracked tarmac

at the end of the road

the dense jungle smells blowing over us

We showed Kevin the game

Where you close your eyes

And you press the heels of your hands over them

And you start to see things

We laid with our heads on each other’s stomachs

so we formed a sort of human trinity knot

and told each other our visions

until the images inside our heads

started to converge 

I reached for that Skull Cave so many times

in the years of adolescent turbulence

Sometimes I could travel all the way down

to that darkness, that stillness, that quiet

But it's the glow of connection I reach for now

our hands pressed tight against the sun

our heads resting on each other

trying to weave together our very thoughts