Eastern Wisdom

Late afternoon clouds, low

moving over Pikes Peak as faux mist.

Weak translucent shade

pulled over the proud peak’s silhouette,

a massive wall rising from the prairie,

both gateway and barrier to the West.

The low cover a pale disguise

seeking to evoke the Appalachians,

eastern grandfather of the Rockies.

Where mist is the white hair of old age,

draped across shoulders

that have born the weight of war

and across eyes that have seen

the birth of a nation and

subsequent hemorrhage and healing.

Wearied by it all, yet patient with its people.

The Rockies represent a different world

of coarse courtesies and jagged prose.

Whose stark and rugged good looks

bow before the grace of eastern beauty.

Whose brashness has little to teach,

and much to learn

From the wisdom of the East.

Quarry

 

Staring down into
A quarry whose size
I cannot guess
Just west of Salt Lake City
I believe it is Salt Lake City
But the plane is at cruising altitude
And I am a child of the earth
With ground born perspective

Looking at this quarry
This vast dead dirt hole
Where a breathing mountain once stood
Where its neighboring mountains
Still stand and now mourn
This new born grotesque pit
Striated by roads
Masquerading as contour lines
On some gargantuan map

The quarry was birthed in tapered layers
Looking as if some giant Mayan or Incan
Had strode here in seven league boots
To pluck from the ground
A deeply geometric form
To adorn Machu Picchu
Or some cold Andean plane
Leaving only its imprint and mystery

It is fine to escape myself
And picture this as something mystical
The deed an act of magic or whimsical gods
Rather than to accept its truth
A scar inflicted by men
Laboring to fulfill some arbitrary task
At the expense of a natural guardian
A thing once as ancient as the world