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the last issue of the bqr, we mentioned the Grand Canyon Semester,
a program for 33 selected honors students from 33 different universities
to participate in an immersion study of Grand Canyon and the Colorado
Plateau. On the following two pages are poems by Ben Brzeski, a
student on the Grand Canyon Semester and photos by Michael Collier,
an instructor in the program.
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Time and Canyons
A descent into the stomach
brings forth the rubble.
The wash of human pebbles
spills into the river.
They trickle down,
making popping noises against
each other, people-rock
in the river.
All things are breathing,
swimming violently within
the current, in the strange fashion
of frogs or fish.
They lick their barricades,
and grind them, down
into time and canyons.
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Faces
in the Muav
There are people in the Muav Limestone.
You can see their eyes and noses
in the rock, Cubist portraits
stacked upon each other
one mile after another.
At Olo Rapids, the sun breaks
down between the myriad,
the rays carried on a wave
of North Rim smoke.
The motion of a boat makes no imprint,
but the eyes can see.
The Muav People know
each eddy, and who has floundered
within them.
Stone sees these things,
records them. It has
no time for joking.
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River
In this I am swimming too.
A pebble brown in color, I am
screaming as I sail by,
charging as the river takes me.
I am listening, searching
for the shore I will set upon. |
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Genesis
I play with little plates
of rock. Tectonics.
The red hardness is sandy
in my hands. Grinding against,
I play godhead, making
continents run, spreading the center,
and pushing plateaus to the sky.
The rocks crumble, the land melts
into crack and crevice, and the sun
continues to set upon the land.
How much time can I sit here,
shifting the slabs, and building?
An eternal morning
passes on and becomes itself
softly in my hands.
The dirty rock fingers,
the dust colored eyes
are still burning. Rock
is burning.
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The Sun Has
Set At Last Camp
I think
it has, but
the sky is still
blue.
The feeling has come,
though, which follows
every sun dusk.
Calm,
waiting,
a dying of sorts.
A sigh, at last,
telling us it is ok
to let go.
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