Down from Muley Point
canyon walls
rise straight and dignified
above the copper river
They are washed with rose
and coral and burnt sienna
and smudged
with gray lichen
a hand-tinted illustration
in a volume
from an antiquarian bookstore

Nineteenth century
naturalists
learned from the Greeks
that there are only
earth air fire and water
In the hubris that is science
we forgot

Down from Muley Point 
I merge like a tributary 
into rills of pink water
and sing off key
to an upstream wind
Burned to ash my dreams
make stones on the hillside
crackle and slide
My skin taste of salt
and iron and dust

What more can I say
Torrents of knowledge
may pour down on us
like red mud
flooding over a cliff
but still we are only
these four strands
arranged in the minds
of rivers