Rick Kempa

“Sunrise, Grand Canyon

We stand on the edge, the fall
Into depth, the ascent

Of light revelatory, the canyon walls moving
Up out of

Shadow, lit
Colors of the layers cutting

Down through darkness, sunrise as it
Passes a

Precipitate of the river, its burnt tangerine
Flare brief, jagged

Bleeding above the far rim for a split
Second I have imagined

You here with me, watching day’s onslaught
Standing in your bones-they seem

Implied in the record almost
By chance- fossil remains held

In abundance in the walls, exposed
By freeze and thaw, beautiful like a theory stating

Who we are is
Carried forward by the x

Chromosome down the matrilineal line
Recessive and riverine, you like

Me aberrant and bittersweet...
Riding the high

Colorado Plateau as the opposing
Continental plates force it over

A mile upward without buckling, smooth
Tensed, muscular fundament, your bones

Yet to be wrapped around mine-
This will come later, when I return

To your place and time...
The geologic cross section

Of the canyon
Dropping

From where I stand, hundreds
millions of shades of terra cotta, of copper

Manganese and rust, the many varieties of stone-
Silt, sand, and slate, even “green

River rock...”my body voicing its immense
Genetic imperatives, human

geology falling away
Into a

Depth i am still unprepared for
The canyon cutting down to

The great unconformity, a layer
So named by the lack

Of any fossil evidence to hypothesize
About and date such

A remote time by, at last no possible
Retrospective certainties...


John Barton”
― Rick Kempa, Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon