I escaped, in a manner of speaking,
To a sequence in which my head was toward
The morning sun, my face had turned
To watch sheer, cracked rock walls with piles
Of highly similar sandstone boulders strewn
Across their exposed, more ancient knees,
And my ears, which I could not shut,
Were at least remote from most machines
And voices, open to the small birds
And the faint, beginning hum of bees
Warming up for spring. It was the nothing
Side of nothing much, leaning away from
The muchness. A distant passenger jet
Rumbled, and a mild canyon katabatic
Caused by the warming stones whisked
Through the brush, the juniper-piñon shawl,
With that husky hushing that always struck
Me as the least meaningful sound with which
World could taunt my meaning-sick
Mind, a hoarse whisper not even a ghost.
I glanced at the book in my lap, a summary
Of evils and injustices and entertainments,
The really meaningful things, concluding,
"And so the ghosts remained, without
Forcing a reckoning, without force at all.
The fact most wrongs never were righted
Some said was the reason for ghosts at all,
But I said there was only one wrong started
The rest and it had nothing directly to do
With murder or knowledge or any human fall,
No, not a consequence of those, but a kind
Of cause, a core correlative, a precondition,
The wrong that guaranteed all the others,
Meant hurt would come and stay to haunt
More wrongs unrequited. It was that there
Was any wrong, there could be wrong at all.
From that condition, nothing could further
Fall because, given wrong was along, it was
All ghosts from then on, packed solid,
Sighing and moaning, furious and helpless,
Making no difference, all the way down and
All the way out, echoing around the same
Sealed cell walls, the same high, closed
Vaults of heaven's domed skull halls."
The natural amphitheater, sized to human
Bodies as human hands to barely visible
Mites, expanded in the warming day,
An upturned palm, creased, pointed fingers
High as towers, cupping specks of flowers.
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