Dead Horse Point, Utah
Thousands of feet below us, a horseshoe
of river encircles a hoof of reddened rock.
The overlook gets its name from this view,
where, according to legend, wild mustangs
were corralled on the slender mesa top, then
culled by cowboys. One time, a century or so
ago, the narrow neck of land was left fenced
off with brush, and the broomtails died of
thirst within sight of the Colorado River
meandering two thousand feet below them.
Beyond the point that bore the weight of
those bleached bones, rusty strata sink and
rise as they stretch out into the distance. An
hour ago, we’d gotten word her sister’s baby
was on the way, and now we let the spacious
silence swell with hope. Above us to one side,
the sun is melting into streaks of currant jam,
to the other a full moon is climbing into
the sky, and then a comet blazes smack dab
in between them like a spiraling fireball.
The spectrum of the spectacle is immense,
and I’m struck by the thought that so much
is beginning, so much expiring, with we
multitude of travelers suspended in the middle
of it all, somewhere between a child inhaling
its first breath and a comet’s tail petering out.
As the light fades and the landscape purples
and blurs, I gaze out at the severed citadels
of plateaus, the plummeting flood basins,
and think how we’re all galloping toward the
edges of what we’ve envisioned, tumbling
into the unknown. Next to me, she has
become a pensive silhouette, and I look past
her, down to the protruding point, wondering
if horses really did die out there, or if it’s
just another wisp of myth on a western wind.
If so, we’re often like those stranded creatures—
everything in sight, what we need so far away.
–
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 or forthcoming from Whale Road Review, Appalachian Heritage, The Bookends Review, One, Still: The Journal, New Mexico Review, and elsewhere. He’s also a bookseller at Parnassus Books.