I’d promised her the canyon would live up to its name,
be beyond grand, yet here we were: our view impeded
by the zoo of people clamoring for selfies, the colors
washed out by the noonday sun, shaking our heads
at a sign urging us not to feed the squirrels for risk of
spreading plague. It turns out wildness is not a thing
to be grasped. In this space, I take off a layer of time
and am a year younger, hiking down Bright Angel Trail
with my brother as we approach a bend and come face
to face with two middle-aged women. Southern courtesy
compels me to step out of the way, toward the edge, but
the dirt is loose beneath my boots, my ankle quivering—
then his hand hard on my shoulder as he yanks me away
from danger. A hand is a parachute, a brother a face in the
mirror. We make it to the bottom, sweaty and aching, and
live a week on rafts, the world above wisping into memory.
On the water, swallows swoop and dart like dogfighters,
a mile of cinnamon-red rock looms above us, the river churns
like an earthen engine. On the water, the only direction is
forward; upon hitting a roiling rapid, the only choice is through.
Within the motion, a stillness; within the heat, a refuge;
within the current, all the paths we’ll pass by and clearings
we’ll amble across, all the glances and gestures we’ll share
like canteens, all the sentences we’ll ever think to say.
–
Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry and a Pushcart Prize nomination, has work published in Cheat River Review, Whale Road Review, Appalachian Heritage, The Bookends Review, Still: The Journal, and elsewhere. He’s also a bookseller at Parnassus Books.