Bryce Canyon

Nature’s long, patient vandalism spree—
Ice that claws crevices, the thaw and flow
That shreds red rock, dissolving a plateau—
Shapes this fantasia of geology,
This landscape of frail sculpture or debris:
Arches that frame the view and are the view,
Precarious high boulders perched askew
On shafts of knobby instability.

Elements tussle and collaborate
In the off-kilter grandeur of this place,
Joined in a flux that fashions and erodes
With gestures that demolish to create,
As, in the vaster canyons of deep space,
New worlds gestate each time a star explodes.