I awoke to find
I had been staring
Down a tunnel like the throat of a serpent
Stretched out twenty-three miles long
And three wide
With a light at the end, dimly shining,
That could have been an image
Of my face.

The reek of it,
The poisonous allure -
It stank like the earth and justice,
Some hallucinogen of equity
An insidious, phantasmal currency,
As if logic and economy
Were applicable here,
Or anywhere.

But then a wind brushed against my chin
And she bade me look at her.
She motioned, open-palmed,
And behind her, a sea of light,
A faint outline of what I knew was true;
With a wink and a wag of the finger,
She turned my head so gently back
To that sticky, soured dark.

The light, foreign,
flickered out;
In some unconditional warmth
With firm hands on my shoulders
I was unafraid.
"You see," she whispered,
Some things deserve nothing less
Than awe."