Cave of Forgotten Dreams

After Werner Herzog
Four charcoal horses animate
in torchlight, that flickering first projector,
sans horsemen, pre-Apocalypse.
Red ochre palm print
by the cave mouth like a house number,
or graffito, preserved by landslide—
a human touch
kept from human touch
for 32,000 years,
the terms of ingress sealed
like a contract: We live
in peace, or want to.
Come and go in peace.

Amy Wright is the nonfiction editor of Zone 3 Press, and the author of four chapbooks. Her work can also be found in Bellingham ReviewBrevity, Drunken Boat, Quarterly West, Southern Poetry Anthology (Volumes III and VI), and Tupelo Quarterly. She teaches at Austin Peay State University and resides in Tennessee, whose beautiful, defensible waterways help her current project, Creeks of the Upper South, written in collaboration with William Wright.

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