“The South Kaibab Trail” by Stephen Lefebure
People tell the truth in just one sense:
They believe the world is what they say.
Those who dislike Nature may suggest
Escape from the mundane is a pretense.
They maintain we do not have a way
To expand our Spirit, the compressed
Remnant we deny all the immense
Spaces it should feed on every day.
Feeling no distress, and yet depressed,
Authorities propose we should dispense
With wilderness, those places we betray
Even as they bless us, those they blessed.
Wear a sturdy shirt, perhaps a vest,
Lots of water, lunch inside your pack —
Hike down to the Phantom Ranch through snow
That quickly melts, as everybody guessed,
Into a summer day where you can snack
Along the ridge crests. On this trail you go
From view to view. Any place you rest
Was designed so there would be no lack
Of wonder. The other trails, you know,
Hug their cliffs, so that they are recessed,
And were paths for miners to bring back
Lead from the Grand Canyon long ago.
Of what you carry, the heaviest weight
Is not your backpack, no real thing you brought —
I mean the struggle that we each begin,
Each boy or girl, at something like age eight,
When we begin our gender role, taught
As much by our peers as elders, in
Verbal and nonverbal ways, to be straight
And unlike the other sex. We ought
As boys to kill all that is feminine
In us, as girls must somehow castrate
The boy inside, the tomboy who once fought
Fiercely, and who had the strength to win.
After many crests your sense of wow
May tire, though your Spirit may insist.
You should rest both feet and feeling heart.
As you pause, you may discover now
That the beautiful may well persist
Speaking as it has done from the start
In a language using thee and thou.
If that sounds old-fashioned, Vishnu Schist
Remembers when Australia was a part
Of North America — you should allow
The Canyon to speak to you and exist
Like a planet no one can depart.
Men may search for years to find the lost
Girl that they remember, in some deep
Part of their unconscious, as the one
They were. They strangled her at such a cost.
When they look at women, do they keep
Comparing each face to the murdered one?
The hypnotic one, whom they accost
With grunts, like animals, as if asleep —
Unknown woman — like an old rerun
Half remembered, filigreed with frost —
Do they court their murdered self, and weep
When rejected? Wed the girl they won?
Beneath the cliffs and crests, your rationale
For coming here may undergo a change.
Above the gorge, a desert scrub plateau
Covers sandstone floor with chaparral.
Life may wait for years here on this range
For rain, and yucca plants may often go
Without bloom depending on morale.
In this in-between world, you exchange
Awe for exploration, which you owe
To the child you brought to this locale
Inside your adulthood, in some strange
Room refusing to be real and grow.
Women know that men may often groom
Them, take an interest in some talent
They possess — entirely to hide
What women otherwise would just assume:
The hunt, that men are always on the scent.
Unfortunately for most women's pride,
When men get them to some hidden room
It becomes clear that they never meant
All that approbation, that they tried
From the first to rape them, they for whom
Men pretended to have pure intent.
All this damage women hold inside.
If your boots are covered now with dust
Of red and orange, you tread on the great
Unconformity between the basement
Vishnu metamorphic schist discussed
Earlier, from earliest known date —
And limestone, shale, and sandstone — junk cement
Made by ocean. Seashells, sand, and just
Organic matter pressed hard to create
A mix of minerals that underwent
Change until it formed some sort of crust.
The dates between them are what demonstrate
A gap — as if erased by some event.
Down below, the gorge is one of two
Places that are hottest in this nation —
Death Valley the other. Water and deer,
Stars and quietude — if we all knew
Places like this, outside, everyone
Might be slow to anger, new to fear,
And open to the growth we can accrue.
Winter visits, two night stays, best done
When fit — your missing Spirit may appear
In the void your childhood left in you.
Even as you plan, this has begun.
They lied who said your self would not cohere.
Any place your feelings can unfold
Is equal to those places with mystique.
Your own heart contains the infinite.
You know words our language never told
Aloud — in you both future and antique
Meanings join to be articulate.
You are the one to come who was foretold
By prophets. Someday soon your heart will speak
A tongue which only silence can transmit.
This will need no wisdom — just behold
How large the space inside you is, and seek
To fill that expanse with your own Spirit.
About Stephen Lefebure
He/Him/His
Poetry by Stephen Lefebure may be found in his own volume, Rocks Full of Sky, and in Wild Song — Poems of the Natural World and Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon, two anthologies of nature poetry. His work may also be found in journals such as Wilderness, Chicago Studies, Bombay Review, and Bangalore Review. He lives in Evergreen, Colorado, USA.