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)