Orpheus & Eurydice

Oppressive heat

Airless underground

Belabored grunting and the suffocated exhalations of earth,

the twitter of a distant finch,

accompany your progress

Shoomp—clink—shoomp!

The piston enters the solid rock

Slide in the charge

Two, four, six

trinitrotoluene

and stand back—

Now,

Tears pool at the corners of your eyes,

oppressive air rushing past

a mosquito in a windstorm

A distant square of white

growing all the time bigger,

ever faster, ever nearer

Brace yourself—

Overtop the shaft

and roar into the sunlight

Orpheus escaping from the bowels of Hades,

but Eurydice didn’t get left behind this time.

July 2010