Sit on a rock

Sit on a rock

and stare

across the water

and the road

to the bluff,

limestone

and rock soaring

to the sky

blue and hard.

Consider the effort

required

to carve and layer
these mounds of rock.

Wonder if God’s hands

got dusty.

A canyon called Box

We come to a canyoned place

with the odd name of Box,

once a cave, perhaps, until geology

crushed its roof and opened its water

to course for eternity. Broken souls

stumbling in wilderness, walking

into a terrible layered beauty

of sharp colors, jagged piercing

ridges and sides, center points

tearing at our self-sown shrouds.

We walk: alcoholic, addict, convict,

poet, inhaling dust of generations,

the stream beside us the eyes of God

watering the sorrow of the earth.

Photograph by L.L. Barkat.