Canyons

Centuries, thousands of them to make
millions of years and the breath of God
to carve through cliffs of clay and layered
sandstone, heaped upon lime and earth,
to spin a river entrenched in rock.

A human hand needs weeks, maybe months
to mimic the sun strokes across aridity,
its afterglow, the rouge in places unexpected.
The wrist without resistance presses movement
into ripples of color on blank canvas.

The mind exhausts an eternity, travels light years,
to reshape rage into orange boulders.  To fracture
beams into lines of blue serenity requires
the patience of Job; requires the erosion of tragedy
into memory, of memory into forgiveness.