My name is Podri Gautuma and I feel a great debt of gratitude to poets.

I read contemporary poets as well as historical poets and read poems from antiquity in Irish

where nobody really knows who the poet was and I'm so full of gratitude because in

as much as poetry can feel like a solitary journey while I'm by myself, nonetheless when

you read old poetry you realise people have been asking these questions for thousands

of years and even though I'm alone, I'm not alone.

The Cave by Paul Trann

Someone standing at the mouth had the idea to enter, to go further than light or language

could go. As they followed the idea light and language followed like two wolves panting,

hearing themselves panting. A shapeless scent in the damp air, keep going, the idea said.

Someone kept going deeper and deeper. They saw others had been there, others had left

objects that couldn't have found their way there alone.

They were stained shells, bird bones, grounded hematite. On the walls as if stepping into

history someone saw their purpose, cows, bulls, bison, deer, horses, some pregnant, some

slaughtered. The wildlife seemed wild and alive moving when someone moved casting their shadows

on the shadows stretching in every direction. Keep going, the idea said again. Go.

Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that outside was another idea.

The image of cave has transfixed people's archetypal imaginations. You can think of Plato's

cave and you can think of all these ways in which we think about cave dwelling peoples

in antiquity. But this image of cave isn't just for the past. This image of cave, something

that calls us into continued further exploration, to go further than light or language could

go. They're like inner space and that operates physically as well as operates metaphorically

...