Know The Canyon’s History, Study Rocks Made By Time
Is what the sunburnt river runner said
At the Three Mile Resthouse
As we were coming out.
Because the shift and settle, wrench
And uplift
Are a largess
We can neither grip or grasp
Without resorting to mnemonics.
Dust and heat and sky and shadow;
Shale, limestone and sandstone —
From small to large and back again,
All has been ground down
Into the finest powder
Of its elements.
We went down by one trail.
Came up by another.
The canyon wrung us out,
Exerted pressure, burned off
The unnecessary,
Left the best,
The whippoorwill’s call,
The scouring red dust.
The implacable mineral gleam
Of water birthed,
From the very bottom of the dam.
I only recently started submitting poetry; I have had poems published in Southwest Review, Ruminate, Places@DesignObserver and Flyway. Eggs for Young America, my first collection of short stories, was awarded a Katharine Nason Bakeless Literary Publication Prize for Fiction and chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. My fiction has been published in quarterlies including American Short Fiction, Five Points, The Yale Review, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse and anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Mystery Stories.
