Years, Centuries, Eons
Janet Kuypers
1/27/17
Scouring this land,
searching for meaning,
I’ve traversed the roads
to see the innate beauty
of how this earth came together.
Discovering this rocky terrain,
caressing smoothed lava beds,
studying the variation of color
in the rainforest’s bamboo stalks
has touched my soul deeply.
Years, centuries, eons
have shifted the plates beneath us.
When I left the plains near Chicago
I traversed the Appalachians,
then sky dove at the Grand Tetons.
But waiting to visit some places
‘til when it wasn’t tourist season
was the smartest way to go,
because that way no one was nearby
when I walked along the ridges
of the Grand Canyon, screamed into
the caverns to no one, before
I climbed into the orange depths
of Bryce Canyon, a rocky range
that’s eternally a vibrant sunset.
Walked miles off beaten paths
at Arches National Park, until
I could see for miles there was no one —
in all that time there only one bird.
No people. No planes. Just peace.
It took years, centuries, eons
for nature to create these
majestic, intoxicating, breath-taking
places that seem like works of art.
But this is just how the world works,
how it became the wondrous
thing we see today. You might think,
no no no, this can’t be that good,
not touched by the hand of man.
But you’ve got it all wrong.
It is possible to utterly, deeply,
completely fall in love with the world —
wholly, with every fiber of your being.
You can adore, idolize this creation —
if you just let nature take its course.
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