Gaping Gill

They lower me down on a rope
A rickety old chair
Deep into the bowels below the moors
There lay a dead body
Shaggy, sodden and splayed
She had fallen perhaps, from a crumbling edge
Had not seen where the ground gaped
Then a frantic cry
Falling
Dark and dank
And falling
Down

I hope she died at once
Did not lie broken for hours or days
Calling out to that circle of sky
But maybe I am wrong
Maybe the flood carried her
Long dead and gone
And left her softly on the stone
Laid her in the bowels of the earth
Where the walls rise up cathedral high
And I trespass on her resting place