Canyons of purpose and slow time
From a height delineating colors
Where the Green and Colorado Rivers merge in
confluence,
One dark, one green, until crashing into
cataracts
Beats them both to white.
White making easy to assume the simplicity of
streams
Traveling seaward, especially from a surface
not to be fought,
Only ridden, holding to prayers of safety
hurtling inexorably
Down, unthinkable effort to reverse
Even the sending of a song back through time
To the source of the darker stream,
Wishing it bright.
Best to plunge, against all instinct, holding breath
As if the mountains depend upon one child
Never breathing through the tunnel,
Below the buffeting of rocks,
To the lowest flows that against all sense
Contravene the roar and fight.
Swim the unconformity until awkward as a child
You take again first steps, faltering speech,
Holding to prayers of safety
While rivers carve their canyons,
Fixity of stone smoothed under sprays of white.
