It's a sun slanting through the still swings kind of day,
the possibilities seem to stretch merely to
the rusted playground and a brown stretch of bermuda
Cousins, bored by the static on the scratched plastic slides
We choose to descend, the manhole grating as we go, carefully down dark ways and slime flights,
Into the sewers.
We traverse the passages, full of lichen
and the sound of water in the dark.
We crouch together as we hear the roar of careening monsters far above our heads. We find ourselves, suddenly, trespassers in a domain belonging to the Dark-limbed spider and
the blind-eyed fish and
the rusted tin can.
But we find that this journey has an end.
Dawn ahead after a dayless age, we clear branches and
Brush aside creeper vines,
And find ourselves gently blinded,
In a new world green with moss and leaf-sifted light,
loud with the sound of frogs.
We step into the sun-splashed day,
shaking off those strange, primeval coats that made us
creatures of the dark,
And pursue silver, quick darting minnows, who
escape to the shadows we once came from,
Liquid creatures belonging to the
dawn and the gloaming together.
At long last we steel ourselves and enter again into the realms of the underworld, And finally emerge changêd beings, spider webbed and mud-spattered Wondering at our journey and the new knowledge of
Worlds yet alive
under our very feet.