CHAUVET CAVE

Before time was time
glaciers here 9,000 feet
thick slowly released
albino alligators inside
the future steam fields
of nuclear plants and at
the bottom of these fecund
pools the single bloody
outline of a hand.
Paleolithic hunters
one thousand years
before the bow and arrow
may have tracked bear
through the crystal glitter
of quartz stalactites and
scratched a pride of lions
onto the red clay wall
as they passed or dreamed
of shy reindeer or clashing
wooly rhino or the whinnying
single head of a horse
stretched to cinematic luster
by the contour of the rock
against a critical charcoal
shading the nostrils and
ear points. Bison and ibex
burst from herds that are
30,000 years old and turn
their flanks from our questions
heading deeper into the cavern’s
recess the flick of their tails
joining the faint celestial drip 
from a world above that is
quietly melting into shadows
hurried away by the spear tips
and hand prints of the human
who silently painted here
holding his breath so as not
to disturb the mind’s inventive
communion understanding for
the first time that the most
important encounter would
be with himself.

Keith Flynn (www.keithflynn.net) is the award-winning author of seven books, including six collections of poetry: most recently Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013) and forthcoming The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, Spring, 2020), and a collection of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer's Digest Books, 2007). From 1984-1999, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (2003). He is currently touring with a supporting combo, The Holy Men, whose album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011. He is the Executive Director and producer of the TV show, “LIVE at White Rock Hall,” and Animal Sounds Productions, both which create collaborations between writers and musicians in video and audio formats. His award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The American Literary Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, Five Points, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Writer’s Chronicle. The Cimarron Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, a 2013 NC Literary Fellowship, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.