For Terry Tempest Williams
Things change slowly in the desert.
Wind, rain, fire
wrestle with sentinels
risen from a primordial sea.
The great Colorado Plateau
stretches across millennia.
Particle by particle
the face of the red rock
revises choreography.
Taupe, mauve, turquoise
narrate the uplift.
Sand dunes fold over petrified beaches.
Things change in the desert.
Wind, rain, fire, Man.
Things move quickly in the desert.
Lizard
darts for shade
under the rabbit bush.
Canyon wren
flits between cracks of
Navajo sandstone,
her tee-tee-tew-tew-tew-tew
descending down the canyon.
And, always, the river
pounding through labial rock
exhorting the unaware,
like Raven,
harbinger of Change.
Time is eternal is the desert.
Handprints in stone haunt
ancient boulevards.
Stories etched on canyon walls
render the passage of Time.
Here, rocks tell time differently.
Emptiness
is the fullness
of space
in the desert.
Space
that eliminates
Time.
Death by starvation is slow.
Darwin was right.
Centuries of people
farmed these grasslands,
dwelling in limestone cliffs
leaving their stories sculpted
by Time
and history’s imagination.
Things change slowly,
left to their own Devices.
Wind, rain, fire,
Man.