Poem 123

As of ten years ago Nettlebed is not this bottom half of the planet’s deepest cave system – that record now belongs to its next door neighbour  Ellis Basin … I love the name Nettlebed and it’s worth reading about just for other names given to features within it – eg a flowstone squeeze known as the Hinkle-horn-honking-holes …

( I like the way the poem says the cave is the kiss rather than the other way round … )

Nettlebed

           is your kiss
I let myself down into
wet
     full of narrow passages
labyrinthine dark and lost
deepest
         in the Southern Hemisphere