[Day 10] Underground

Liminal dispatch, 04.13.20

I read about worlds living darkly directly beneath our feet —

a labyrinthine invisible Paris, for example,
ghostly mirroring the one topside:
mazes of streets and tunnels contracting and opening
into candlelit grottos and vaulted cathedrals of space,
cradling bones and relics, smelling of dirt and damp stone
instead of car exhaust and bread and light.

or what about the River Reka that vanishes into limestone,
burrows and bursts its way through mountains,
hidden but no less real and roaring,
its whole being swiftly shifted under sight,
carried in a lightless underland for miles and miles, until
it rushes, fresh and salt swirled, to mingle with the Adriatic

— and it’s the same feeling I have when I think about
the multiverse or miracles or Diagon Alley:
that adjacent to this buzzing world, a different reality floats,
expansive, self-contained, like an animal in the woods
watching me unseen, a thing I pass by or over, oblivious,
a thing that does not need my noticing to be real,
and if, for once, I hooked the vapor of that veil
with my clumsy…