Gunnison River, Black Canyon

By Ryan Harper

At bottom they were groping for light:
such a pass a day makes across the rocks,
pale rails rolling up the twisted trunks
of junipers. People like them had warned them:
no place for the neophyte.

Hard to tell behind veils what goes down,
but the land’s higher relief is first
to vanish under secret claims; secret
combinations of people like them would clear them
from the west, for the breaking ground.

John Gunnison, layman, captain, friend
to the civilized tribes, sent dispatches;
the rapids grayed as the white day came and went
over lunch. Those who knew Zion by light
believed a glory reached its end.

The clash by night and the clash with night—
ignorant armies never know which, cause
Gambel oak, knuckled root and gneiss, to assume
martial postures. Back all this, the latter-day fear:
Zion ruled in plural, off-white.

Gunnison, at bottom you will lie:
rising schistic to the canyon rim
great columns of earth will keep watch—for the dark,
with the dark—make your peace with the hard stakes,
the rails laid up into the sky.