fire awe symbols

twenty and seventeen are just two numbers

and we were just six 

three tents one bivy 

all of us among trees

and stones you could never count.

days and miles logged were marked

by moments enacted like blue lizards

sunbathers of baroque paintings

positioned perfectly

to frame each view of disappearing horizons.

latent wildfire smoke obscured them

and reality drifted away.

this place was devonian jurassic and eocene

all at once and spoke the common tongue

the partnership of glacial polish and erratics.

seasons have always been its heartbeats

and we only just starting walking.

above waterwheel falls

we checked privilege gave thanks

and offered prayers to each our creators

with generous pinches of tobacco.

we drank from san franciscan toilets

and swam in their bathtubs

cold and called the tuolumne 

its pools every spanish revival blue of the mission.

granite calloused our soles

granite scrubbed clean our souls

all of it with its whites and blacks

pure quartz and feldspar 

a modernist dance frozen in homeostasis.

and where there is quartz there always is gold

and for us the gold was the perfect light

it led the way each day up only up

towards the cerulean

through grand canyon depths

and steps into scenes of

beauty refined but not by us.

for five full days we created fire

knew awe and sought symbols

here in this canyon we became human

more than we were before.