The Cave Painter
Flame crack…as trees rustle in the spirit of the night.
Stone cut…as bison gallop across the plain.
Dust fall…as stars float back down to the earth that bore their embers.
Inside the cave.
Though walls be rough and wild within churning chasms and dripping dark.
It’s here that voices speak the most clearly where grunts and groans just miss the mark.
So many spears and angry shouts dividing rocks and trees as if they were carcasses.
For birds to pick apart.
All is taken for the best to claim while scrounging vermin have to settle their scores, or else…
Be fair game.
Meanwhile the birds can make their nests high in the trees or upon the cliffs.
No one can argue, no one can dispute, no one can dare take what is rightfully theirs.
By divine tribute.
Yet here I am…somehow I last.
Though the odds weren’t in my favor, a wind has brought me passed.
All the arrows and fallen bolts, carnivorous beasts and rotting souls.
And so much more that could’ve been told.
I really wasn’t supposed to survive, yet here I am still bearing the record passed down to me by time.
Of course, the cracks still bleed from time to time where pigments and clay can’t fully cover.
The choices long made and the questions that can’t be uttered.
Yet I still draw stars on empty nights and wandering herds on barren scapes.
Painting the world not as I see…
But rather as I believe.
The world is only set in stone when we become the prey of our own defeat.
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SOLOMON SHINDLER is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in Philosophy. A romantic by profession, but a philosopher by trade, Solomon writes to uncover the mysteries of life when he is not busy with school, work, play, or sleep—or in other words, life. Yet if you should catch him with a moment to spare, he does enjoy a conversation or two about science, history, and culture or just about who you are.