Patience

Blind salamanders

in the flooded caves

of Herzegovina

can live a hundred years.

Not doing much of anything.

One calm individual

hasn’t moved at all

for seven years.

They wait,

listening for

a snail to move.

One meal

can sustain them

for a decade.

Every dozen

years or so,

they mate.

What dreams

does such a

creature have?

In the cool subterranean

flow of crystal waters

in their century long night,

do they dream of drifting

through the darkness

of intergalactic space?

Do they summon

ancestral memories

of when their progenitors

were the first to walk

upon the virgin earth?

In their blindness,

perhaps they seek

to see the face of God.