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Canyonlands

September 2005: we meet again

words can't say

heart/land is the latest raving rant from me to of re: Canyonlands * i can still recall red cliffs when i close my eyes, though i can see also how i love my home -- the food here, omigawd, returning to ripe figs with the strawberries & peaches still going? there's a bit of heaven in every place & the whole is so much better for all the parts, but, o me, those red canyons on that Green River & the Colorado too, flashing, waterfalling when we went up it on the way out... i hate to leave * i clutch my promise of return & i tear myself out of the dizzy clear whirlpool of quiet must-heed voices of the place pulling on me, sucking me slow forever into through outside myself * it's all telling me i can't leave, will never be able to leave * there is the place, yes (o yes), the undeniable touchable unknowable real true place but there is another location here too & this is a where (aware) that never quite leaves you once you have taken it in * this ... presence is another kind of real & true (& mad & deep, indeed) * i look at Pippin here in my wondrous rich home, see how present he is, how here... i think, 'no, i am not back to Caspar yet' *

thoughts stolen by the vivid path created by light water time through the ever-shifting every-coloured canyon land, stilled by how clear & right it is that i am so tiny compared to that much life, i've lost myself enough to see * i imagine my spirit lingering in that silk soft sand, not restless: found * i envision my silly little (precious little) heart scattered in pieces like the skin from my hands & feet scraped off on rocks along the way * it's glinting through a particularly bright piece of maroon eyed flint * carressed by a thousand whispering pulls of water * coated with the stains sliding down all angles of walls * sliced by the wing blade of brother raven * exposed in the sudden magic swoop of a kestrel on a lame duck who dove into the water while i wished the hawk a good meal * tangled through a sodden blue heron feather * turned loose by a hundred skittering, glancing lizards & blossoming prints, fearless eyes of mice * hooked in the dark skeleton of a plant so thin & red that i can only see it against the rock & soil because i know it's there because it slowed my eyes long enough for me to see, so that now my eyes are so open that i can still see it & all these things * sinking into the rising pure high call of a dozen bats each night * giggling in the startled squawk of the morning bird finding my tent smack in the center of the early commute * even threaded through a sweaty worn bandana & caught between ringed toes on a pair of hard-working trusted feet, glimpsed for one frozen second, telling their own sweet story of contentment * spread finely, not thinly but so that i am all mixed up in the place or it with me * landing somewhere between never wanting to forget & never being able to get free of the circling memories * knowing that, as with all the best journeys, i return changed * i will have to pay attention, but this change will continue me. . .

words all lost yet i can't stop!