Molly Fisk: Singing Canyon Sonnet

I have to say something about the blue grasses by the side of the road, 

the red rock rising behind them, a lacy kind of scrub juniper, 

yellow-green in afternoon light, dotted here and there up the broken slope 

.

and walls scraped sheer, the red striated with bars of gold and brown.

I have to tell how two greasy ravens startled from their perch 

made a raucous noise in the slot canyon. Their cries bounced upward 

.

magnified by a hundred where I had just been singing Amazing Grace

and they had not stirred, the only hymn whose verses I reliably remember. 

My boots raised puffs of fine red dust behind me walking back to the car. 

.

I should mention that the aspen leaves were thumbnail-sized and vivid,

that anvil clouds quickly overtook the sun, that before I saw those thirty-seven 

white-tailed deer I was feeling unbearably lonely and I might as well confess 

.

how acutely I miss the man I left at home even though I drove

two thousand miles away from him to figure out which one of us to love.

---

Copyright 2019 Molly Fisk