All Souls - Ann Marie Macari

[Larry Robinson]

All Souls
	Cougnac Cave, France

Many corners turned beneath
pencil-thin stalactites, thousands
like upside down candles,
wet flames dripping.
Beyond my mind's
violence, there,
an ibex painted
in stalactite-milk
with wall-ooze for
a shaggy coat. Will it always
be buried? Memory
stumbling into mineral stillness.
crystallized, almost lucid, or carried -
a forgotten animal across
my shoulders, radiant
and awash in lactation, made
with hand, mouth, spit.
Dear friend, I remember
being painted 
in coal and blood,
and the long gallery
where all souls parade.

	- Ann Marie Macari
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