Antelope Canyon, Valentine Cavern

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The caves of love, romantic love, each old

Like stone they carve through, wait inside the chests

Of boys and men.  Each curving sandstone fold

In caverns echoes masculine maze quests

Along the chambers poetry would sing

Of, if a villanelle might capture pain,

The echoes ever finding twinge and zing

Away from outer desert worlds of stain.

When waters over eons etched these walls,

These etchings did not know a saint would come

Called Valentine.  Results of rocky halls

Knew nothing of our human hearts, their thrum.

  Eternity is far too long a time

    But men in love know all too well its chime.

~ Phillip Whidden