Bright Angel Point

It wasn't the mile-deep chasm yawning
her array of blunt, red rock teeth,

or terraced tiers of rip-faced cliffs
revealing two billion years
of geology carved smooth
by a raging Colorado.

It wasn't walls of rock glowing bright
with oranges, reds ignited by a sun bedding down
among tinder-dry crowns of ponderosa pine.

It wasn't the hawk's cry
above a wind-whistled abyss
littered with scraps of shattered boulders.

It wasn't the hiss of pine needles
on trees perched atop rock pinnacles,
trees whose roots dangle down
twenty feet to find the crumbly earth.

No, it was this -- 
me, vanishing slowly into silence,
blood rushing through my ears,
me, shrinking to a pebble
on the dizzying precipice,
dwindling to a fleck of dust
blown out into infinite space...

Scott Speck
12/16/2002