There was nothing to this landscape
But corrugated beauty, the heaps of black
Basalt sprawled under the sheer, fractured
Ochre, white, and buff sandstone cliffs.
Therefore, although hunters had passed
Freely for millennia and Latter Day settlers
Had run cattle through the scrub, no one
Sedentary had ever made farms or factories.
In an overcrowded world it began to serve
A purpose for tourists and local visitors.
Even on a weekday during the school year,
In the canyons where no one actually lived,
Lines of brightly clothed cyclists and duller
Trail walkers in shorts and dun sun hats
Snaked out from trailheads clustered
With parked RVs, pick-up trucks, and cars.
I wanted to know, as escapist and common
As the rest of them, seated at a picnic table
In one old juniper's speckled egg of shade,
Why beauty was for visiting, why beauty
Was beauty at all, why I would rather drive
Here than remain in a bustling town, why
Even here, I would rather drive all the rest
Of my mostly affable, chatty conspecifics
Out of sight and earshot to keep this for me.
I could not see the use of any of it to me,
But when a woman walked back to her family
Disappointed she had not spotted the rare
Desert tortoise on her hike, I tilted my ears
A moment to listen, just in case there was
Information in her words. What do we want,
What magic, always just past the edge
Of what's easiest for us and never enough?
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