There is a place on the edge of the Grand Canyon
Where once I stood
It, being in the shape of a long, narrow triangle
I walked out to the point
Just barely wider than my shoulder-width feet
And stood there trembling
With my closest fellow
Choosing to remain
In safer territory
For to the right and left of me
No stone floor was found
And there was none still in front
Only underneath me and back behind…
So, as my gaze lifted up from my own tattered shoes
I saw only the distant floor and walls of the Canyon afore and about me
As though I floated in the air
Or rather plummeted
As a falling angel
Cast out of Heaven perhaps
Who opened his eyes
Before crashing into the fallen and cursed, terrestrial plain
Just to think to himself,
“Goddamn… it is so beautiful.”
I felt the vertigo grip me
Yet I lost not my balance
As any wavering would be death
I stood there for a single moment
Stretched into eternity
I marched in my mind
Both forward and back
As much as I was only present in that moment as well
Foolish and bold though it was
There I stood forever
And though after that moment
I walked back away from the Canyon’s treacherous edge
I never left it
I am standing there still today
Suspended in the air
Held by an unseen stone
As unsure as it is firm
Until I eventually fall
Happily
Into my own bliss
Never again to return
Yet, ever to be.
If only as a whisper
Subtly
Through the lips of eternity
Or only the moment
Either way…
It makes no matter to me.
Copyright: Luke Austin Daugherty 2014
(all rights reserved)