(Written after my first visit to the Grand Canyon)
The peaks and deep canyons reach toward the horizon before me,
For centuries such grandeur has summoned great works from the artist,
How such beauty was forged in the hands of blind forces,
Makes shallow the movement in my heart toward worship.
In contemplation this great expanse reaches deep within,
And magically lifts me up to levitate over its crags and crannies,
Instinctively I brace myself as if pushed by a physical power,
Then I relax and resume the musings inspired by such beauty.
Resting in the midst of the canyon time passes unnoticed,
Yet I consider the work of time and the generations of witnesses,
And how I now join the grand and delighted procession of the ages,
Who stood here transfixed by the vista of beautiful rocks and river passages.
But suddenly, as a climber severed from his rope-conjoined mate,
A sense of isolation and then desparation permeates my soul,
The state of suspension is fading fast, my soul finds nothing firm to grasp,
Time reappears before me now, a grim sense of my mortality sinks deeper.
Soon another will occupy my place on this steep and dusty path,
Embracing all that lies before them except me by time made invisible,
At first in anger I shout aloud to them for being ignorant of my state,
Then I realize that they too will share in this our mortal fate.
As the shadows grow longer and the sun begins its slow descent,
An omnipresent radiance emerges enveloping everything before it,
All movement ceases, even time seeps away through the canyon’s crevices,
And then all the generations appear together as a single cloud of witnesses.
No longer do I sense any meaningless, separation, or isolation,
This place, this time, bears within it the ties of an eternal relation,
My soul finds rest tethered to One seen clearly now face-to-face,
The deep movement in my heart finds joy nothing will ever erase.