The Gash, Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming

A random fleck, you stand in ruptured day-
dream, a terminal point atop a fault
on a foothill where arid stressed earth cracked
herself open. Jacquard hues, spectrum
of mauves and taupes, stack as delicate
striation on vertical slants. The divorced
crevice walls are not estranged. Do not abandon
each other. Steep sides work together
to shore a continent against tumbling
into the fissure, each strike-slip bolsters:
one holds north in place, the other south at bay,
each scarred face a torn photograph of eons,
history read by those who know this language
etched by time. Back lashed against perpetual

gales bristling your torso, you stand, lodgepole rigid,
long gaze trained westward conveying hundreds of miles
of magnitude. The velocity
of one glance carries split recognition.
Like this mound of land, you have no immunity
against sorrows that burrow labyrinths of tunnels,
against yearning that seeps into every chamber
weakening foundation, against distances between
your feet planted at this crumbling ledge
and memory pooled behind those mountains.
Schools of silver trout leap momentarily
into cerulean death, then arc back
to safety in the black-green lake depth, the rainbows
of their brief flights shimmer, inklings riding wind.