Canyon Greats!

grand canyon, both ways from the rim it's a postcard. a mile of air and a river thin as a pencil line, something you photograph and think you've seen. from the bottom it's a cathedral that took six million years to argue itself into existence. the summer rain comes warm and the pastel stones drink it in, rust and rose and bone, each layer a secret the water finally talked out of the rock. people left their memories here. handprints in the alcoves, potsherds in the dust, initials some fool scratched in 1922 next to a wall a thousand years older. the canyon keeps them all the same way it keeps everything: patiently, without comment, wearing down and opening up at the same time. from above you see how small you are. from below you see how new. either way the rain keeps falling, and the stone keeps telling whoever bothers to climb down what it couldn't say from a distance.