I mentioned earlier that I enjoyed reading at Open Mic Night at Arts Garage this week. I ended up reading three pieces from Context, Voices and Dreams (https://www.amazon.com/Context-Voices.../dp/B096LYN8LF/) including The Abyss. This was the first time reading it before an audience. I read it once previously on a Camperdown NYC Zoom open mic.
--Steve
[The Abyss is an insanely sharp, deep gorge, on the south rim of Grand Canyon National Park]
She stands at the precipice,
Battling her fear of falling,
And fears less easily named,
Her toes on edge of the world.
She stares out over The Abyss,
And watches cloud shadows
Effortlessly ascending through eons and epochs,
Hopping the crest of the present day
And descending with reckless abandon
Through bands of umber, sienna,
Terra-cotta and mummy,
Into the crayon-colored chasm of the past,
Only to repeat the process on the next ridge,
And the next, and the next:
Santayana’s nightmare made manifold
In sun and shadows;
A chiaroscuro history in layers of ancient rock
That mirror, in metaphor,
Man’s machinations in dirt and blood.
The shadows move with slow grandeur,
But the canvas itself creeps slower still,
As the landscape is eroded by wind and sun and rain,
Ice and snow, and less visible things:
Acids, lichens, microbes,
And the vibrations of the earth
As it spins, and precesses, and careens its way
Through days, and years, and ages of man.
At the bottom of the canyon,
Largely hidden from sight,
Flows the river itself:
A collection of cascades and runs and rapids
And eddies and quiet pools whose distant
Rumbles and more distant whispers
Tell tales of time lost from the light,
And uncovered again,
As its efforts etch ever deeper toward Eden,
Or the dinosaurs or coelacanths
Or slime molds or stardust
From which we came.
“Too much to comprehend,”
She decides, and instead closes her eyes,
Making the most of the moment,
Listening to the lulling sounds of the wandering wind,
And feeling its fragrant fingers on her face and arms,
Filled with the scent of blooming
Desert mallow, chicory and indigo,
And sensing the subtle skittering of the sand
As it sifts about her sandals and
Showers over the edge of the world,
As if this tiny trickle could fill the infinite void below
And bury the past from sight once again.
“Good luck with that,” she whispers.
