Collapse Doline #poetry #earthweal

Collapse doline
you draw me in, below, beneath
and in between
the underworld and over.

Persephone was crownéd queen
here in this realm
silent, unseen
beside her demon lover.

The fear of death evoked beneath
the sealing stone’s rock ceiling, 
the river with one raging breath
a wat’ry fate revealing.

Collapse doline, the world within
punctured my heart with knowing 
parallel worlds in other times
hidden by outward showing

the falsehoods of our daily lives
materially demanding
futile works with futile hands
wrought by misunderstanding 

our time on earth, our life-in-death
a misinterpretation 
we seek the sacred river’s breath
divine, as inspiration.

© Experimentsinfiction 2021, All Rights Reserved

Written for earthweal

Brendan’s challenge this week is to write of a voyage to the Otherworld. As he explains:

I have used the medium of Irish myth, but voyages to the Otherworld are universal. Journey there this week from inside your own story-cycle, and report on the news you find there.

As luck or fate would have it, I had the privelege of journeying to the Otherworld of Škocjanske Jame at the weekend, and initially I tried to write a narrative poem about the experience, inspired by Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan.’ However, this poem ended up ‘meandering with a mazy motion,’ so I began again, this time writing not the narrative of the trip but of the internal experience it evoked.

I may revise the Coleridge-inspired poem and put this up for the Open Link Weekend.

Škocjanske Jame had ritual significance as far back as the 12th Century BC, when they most likely were recognised as marking a boundary between the known world and the underworld. A ‘Collapse Doline’ is a sinkhole formed when the underground river collapses the rock ceiling above through the sheer power of erosion.