That chorus you can’t hear is a forest
of dangling bodies seeing the sound, seeing
the future as smaller wings thrumming,
the past as shutter and release and flash-
bulb capture. To prevent white nose, the humans
were walled off and the cave breath became
just for the natives. Its constant fifty-one
degrees, its loving damp glistening
the karst. Oh what falls is waste, but not
the bodies, not the forest. The hikers
can still peek in. The signs still point
down. The roots search and find. The habit
of believing the sky is above and the earth
is below has never helped us understand
the ground we stand on, has never taught
us what the dirt takes. Listen, the silence
of this darker night is not silence, it is a city
of birth and shivering with the floor above,
with feet grasping skyward to find a little sleep.
Devil’s Icebox
JOHN A. NIEVES has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: North American Review, Copper Nickel, 32 Poems, American Literary Review and Southern Review. He won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is associate professor of English at Salisbury University and an editor of The Shore Poetry. He received his M.A. from University of South Florida and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.