Craighead Caverns, Tennessee
The cave is ages deep. A wisecrack tourguide
leads us through the antechambers, full of silence
and, when he cuts the power, the sort of darkness
that sends you quickly blind. Stalactites’ untimely
growth shivers to solidity, and Civil War graffiti
still proclaims who loves whom best, sometimes
with explanatory diagrams. Concrete smooths
transition past redundant stills and broken barrels
falling apart like petals. Then we hit the lake –
large as a cathedral and uplit with unsettling submerged
spotlights – and the promised boats. The outboard
evokes strimmers. Glib pallid shapes reveal themselves
occasionally in the salt-blue water. Not indigenous,
the guide explains, but introduced to puzzle
a way out, and there isn’t one. And look what the dark
has managed – the ordinary trout sightless and infertile
after months. We have to replenish twice a year,
he says, and tips them dogfood. Through the smeared
glass bottom of the boat we can’t distinguish anything.
