Into a cleft in the earth.
No extensive cave network greeted me
 just a small subterranean parlour.
The light was still good.
You should know I brought with me Orpheus
Theseus, Lazarus; what have you.
Is it odd that I quickly dispensed with these shades?
They quickly dissolved at any rate.

There were no sweet wrappers or plastic bottles.
There were no bones or cave paintings.
There was nothing foreign I might say.
Had alien-like humans ever crept 
into the earth here for shelter?
I could find not the slightest scratch of evidence.

I can't find words to tell how GOOD that made me feel.
I was struck by a kind of madness 
this was MINE! It's not that I would stay there 
happily until I perished, but
you must believe it was tempting.

Making my way back to the now not so 
familiar world, I was crammed into a bus
with other long-suffering workers.
Any of the anxious condemned
I was free to believe, having their own
incommunicable experience,
would forgive me as I forgive them
for so many of these stuttering attempts:
we are not machines.