Rule of Thirds tells me
Never place the horizon
In the middle of the frame
But I am often as enraptured
With the sky as the land
So break that rule without remorse
Rule of Thirds tells me
Never place the horizon
In the middle of the frame
But I am often as enraptured
With the sky as the land
So break that rule without remorse
Embers burn beneath the grey
From the fire an amber glow
Mitten outlined on horizon black
In the dying light of setting sun
A simple scene becomes exquisite
I return to fabled places
Find there
Always
Something new
A different light
A new story
History added
Or revised
Here mittens and buttes
Formations once remembered
For Spaghetti Westerns
Now where Forrest Gump
Just plain stopped runnin’
Barely a trickle
Below, broken evidence
Here sometimes a fall
From a high vantage
Late in the afternoon
Or is this early evening?
An in-between of light and tone
Like my mood
I scan the roads
Which took me here
Now and in the past
And again perhaps
In some near or distant future
Far below
Moving slowly
Or so it seems
Scale and time
Diminished by the distance
Carloads of people
And luggage
Expectations
And dreams to be
Fulfilled or dashed
Some approach
Some recede
All have, or will
Round the curve below
Before, or after
Passing behind me
On the switchback’s final curve
Some stop
Unload their occupants
Who join me and the gentle breeze
On Cedar Mesa’s rim
To bask in changing sky
With quiet wonder
My fear is always
More about the road
Already travelled
Than what is to come
I carry the past
As tragedies
And failures
Then project them ahead
Like road signs
Diverting me from a truer path
I remind myself
When checking the rearview
Acknowledge the tragedies and failures
Along the road once travelled
But leave them in the past
Then bring to mind
The triumphs and successes
Project these on every road ahead
As billboards of encouragement
With my love I stand
On the brink of immensity
At once diminished to a speck
And raised up with a presence
I can only describe as divine
As immense as the canyon below me
My love takes my hand
Rests her head on my shoulder
Nothing is so grand as love
I stand upon this grandest rim
Try to imagine unthinkable time
Relent before too long such fruitless task
Instead I’ll contemplate this lazy little rhyme
Through the plateau
The Colorado pickaxe falls
Reveals sedimental sandstone rings
The eons marked on canyon walls
Rock bottom finds the hardest rock
Twelve hundred meters down below
There an ancient granite shield
No deeper can the river go
But wider still
The river’s reach
A force of will
The cliffs be breached
Upstream the river
Has not yet found
The basement rock
So burrows still into the ground
This little peal of green
Winding through the desert red
Cut its path through rising rock
Stone once silt when waterborne
Now to the sea writhes its decay
Perhaps again to stratify
Beauty sculpted
With the softest tools
The utmost patience
Beheld by a mind
For a fleeting moment
Recorded for a moment more
While the sculptor
Chips away
Her pieces ever
Works in progress
Not a one complete