Poem

Zion

/ /

In a wasteland south of the Great Salt Lake, the man on the cliff edge calls,

his voice lost among the echoes. Each echo stranger than the last, more

removed from the throne and throat of human error. So vast the emptiness

I cannot tell you what is echo, what a voice. One bird becomes two,

two—in silence—one, and still, to me, the many. Where there is design,

there is a story. Where there is beauty, the ache of light that is everywhere

broken. Two birds become one, one the many, a flock against the sheer

indifferent glory of the palisades. Where there is beauty, there is chaos

in the beauty-shattered eye. If you are coming, bring water, figs, strong shoes.

Bring a friend. I will bring the silence of one friend who came and fell

(or was it jumped) and just kept falling, one day beneath the cliffs of Utah.