Cave Paintings
Altamira
(11,000 BCE)
Cold rock presses on shoulder and neck.
Sunshine dwindles until daylight is a distant star.
A great weight of earth weighs me down.
The tour guide strikes a crimson spark.
Firelight flickers, shadows dance, animals appear:
deer, elk, boar, buffalo.
Magic illusions
created from fat, charcoal, red ochre, ash …
how long have these huddled herds
grazed their way across these walls?
My spirit sweats as elders anoint
my flesh with bear grease (for strength),
with greyhound hair (for speed),
with wolf blood (for tenacity on the trail).
They brush my eyes with eagle feathers.
Now I am a hunter.
I envision the animal my arrows will pierce.
My backbone arches like a bow.
I shoot thought arrows:
my beloved dances her death dance on tip-toe.
rogermoorepoet 
Oh my! This is marvelous! I so very much want to visit the caves where these paintings reside. I’ve only seen the photographs, but what visions they conjure of the remote past. Most excellent!
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Thank you, Meg. You are indeed catching up. Good to see you here and so glad you enjoyed the poem. Lower down I comment on my first experience of the caves (1963). There was virtually nobody visiting them at that time.
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I saw that. What a fantastic experience!
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It was. It has stuck with me all my life. When I went back the second time, they had put electric lighting in and nobody turned the lights out. They had also excavated more of the floor so that people could stand up to look. I sometimes think that what I saw was a dream …
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Oh that’s a shame. They have to make everything tourist-friendly and in the process diminish the experience.
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By the late sixties there were 30-40 air-conditioned tourist coaches parked waiting for their turn to enter the caves. The body heat of the visitors was such that it warmed the caves and the paintings started to self-destruct. They needed the cold to survive. That’s when they shut the caves. Scientific visitors only now, I believe, with written permission from the state etc.
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Well, thank goodness someone pulled the plug before they were lost forever.
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Love the last line … dancing on tip-toe sounds joyful …
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The first time I visited the caves, back in 1963, a little man placed a red hanky over a torch, turned out the electric lights, and waved the torch slowly up and down in imitation of firelight. The walls came alive and the herds moved and the buffalo danced on tiptoe. It was incredible.
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Beautiful tribute to the captivating art of the past…
That uplifted me, Roger! Thanks.
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Just for you, Tanya. I’ll publish it sometime.
El Cristo de Carrizo
“Contemplate this crucifixion.
Each time you sin
you plant a fresh
thorn in your savior’s
crown.
Each misdemeanor
spears the sacred side
or hammers a nail
in hand or foot.
Christ lives in you.
your daily misdeeds
nail him daily to the cross
he bears for you.
No death, for him,
no resurrection:
just an everlasting hanging
from these nails you daily drive.”
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Thank you so much, my dear friend. That brought the tears to my eyes, in a good way!😊It is so beautiful. I will let that one carry me through the night and off to sleep.
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