(My son’s observation)
Russia Threatens Nuclear Attack. —News Headline
The sky’s movement turns epic
over steep red canyons,
stacked cumulus that can turn dark,
flash daily floods through trails.
To your less than a decade, the Canyon Ranger says
60 million years of the earth’s crust
can be read in these rocks—
ravines worn by water, wind, and ice
into more than 60 shades of copper,
purple, and cream.
In a deeper maze than we’ve imagined,
chameleon totems change shapes in stone,
torsoed monoliths unmoved
where they line our narrow way down
in stillness amplified by footfall.
Dusk approaches like a new bronze age,
the nuclear sun melting swollen and wavery
beyond this last group in,
warned of lost hikers who perished
thinking they could climb their way
out of any geography.
Crevices graven from mingled pasts
have left a few tall sentinels, as though to keep us
from facing too much in what light remains.
We wonder how to depend upon what’s left
of statuaries and footpaths, our own pasts
shaped by what is added to them,
how the day lights them
when we look back.
Climbing out, winded, as rains
turn trails to fluent red,
how are we to mask that recurrent fear
of what may be happening just out of sight
a million burnt years
or a moment before?