this is a poem

isn’t it grand

shouts into the canyon refuse return flights rimside,
batter off walls at the bottom, await a transformation
into a top-heavy metaphor for spiritual barrenness,
a change that never arrives, of course, so against its will
it remains unfull, the air within vibrato with a measured
lack of movement, not unlike an empty concert hall
that never really empties: curtains, stage, seats & cellos
left unstrung yet humming with potential symphonies
one frequency beyond the ears — this hard desert labors
to birth new prophets, Abrahamic cowboys on the trail
west, who cart stone luggage along the river, board long
canoes and point them at the gulf, not knowing the flow
no longer goes there, that their message will never reach
the coast, that only a trickle down a ditch gives evidence
a god once cut this whole in earth before it was a grave.