The Canyon's Majesty

When you look across
this vast landscape
now, it’s hard to believe

that it could possibly
be damaged or lost
due to acts of man.

But each threat alone
is capable of eroding
a piece of the canyon’s majesty,

and together these threats will strip
the landscape of its ability
to do the thing that makes it unique:

to instill humility
by demonstrating that human beings
are tiny in relation to the forces
that have shaped this planet,

and that we are not the center of the world.

-- Roger Clark, Grand Canyon Trust program director
(arranged quote, from recent article on development in Grand Canyon)

I Think I Could Turn and Live With Animals

I think I could turn
and live with animals,

they are so placid
and self-contained.

They do not sweat and whine
about their condition,

they do not lie awake
in the dark and
weep for their sins,

they do not make me sick
discussing their duty to God,

not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with
the mania of owning things,

not one kneels to another
nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,

not one is respectable
or unhappy
over the whole earth.

- Walt Whitman

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.


--Maggie Smith

Prescription for the Disillusioned

Come new to this day.
Remove the rigid overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud your vision.

Leave behind the stories of your life.
Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.

Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty,
the plans and planned results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you,
new every breath, every blink of your astonished eyes.

– Rebecca del Rio