Grand Canyon Time

Rounding the first switchback
down the Kaibab trail
I shade my eyes with my arm
and look up toward the canyon rim.

The relentless Colorado
had taken a millennium or two
to score away the Arizona crust
down to where I stand -
eons before our first forebears
foraged the African plains and forests.

Below a spectrum of earth tone strata
stripes the canyon walls
chronicling the forgotten lives
of ferns and trilobites and dinosaurs
encrypted deep in fossil code.
Two billion years of earth time
etched in jagged walls and buttes.

I sink my walking stick into the dust,
turn the switchback corner
and continue my briefest of hikes
between the walls of omnipotent time.

robyn selters
wonderful closing line to a satisfying vista of an ancient land

Fay Slimm
Poetic eloquence makes the scene almost tangible Robert. What a grand place is that Canyon.

Nightowl
the stories that river could tell would fill volumes. A great read.

Sandra Martyres
"The relentless Colorado had taken a millennium or two to score away the Arizona crust down to where I stand" A great write on the timelessness of the Grand Canyon