The golden hues of sunrise
Seem always
Somehow
More precious
Than the golden goodbye
Of sunset

The golden hues of sunrise
Seem always
Somehow
More precious
Than the golden goodbye
Of sunset
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
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
Another
Another
Another
How many layers deep?
I see only the next
Unpack another
See another
Unpack
Another
Until I don’t want
To see anymore
Unpack anymore
Dig anymore
And the creatures
Which skittered there
Having barely left the sea
I think of a wave
And the littlest living things
Awash in the foaming ocean
Not so unlike
The littlest living things
Swishing over my feet in the surf
No life
No green
No creatures
Scurrying
(Or so it seems)
Towering
Above the land
Which for a thousand miles
Has known only sky
And a horizon
Beyond infinity
We enter here
By the millions
Entranced
You see
The mighty columns say
This once was plain
Withered away
Exposing us
The roots of Earth
Soon enough
More rain will come
Erode the land
You’re rooted on
Until you fall
Then come to rest
As dust beneath
Our hoodoo feet