Zion Park- in the Virgin River

The Crippled Bard and Too tall Frances sat in the Virgin River
which ran thick and clayful, murk the colour of chocolate milk
bringing twigs and bark to nuzzle their naked bodies
around them rose the canyon walls of the Narrows,
great twisting walls of bare red rock
banded with grey and browns, curving here and bulging outwards there
the walls rose for thousands of feet above, separated below
only by the muddy band of the river.

Sitting in the porous lukewarm water
the canyon filled the souls of too tall and the cripple,
thoughts chasoming upwards around the stubborn river
really no more than a creek
besides them the hard rock of the Canyon had conceded
a small sand bar to the dirty Virgin,
littered with large rough rocks from the cliffs
and smooth ones the river
had caressed till they became warm and rounded
above the rocks stubborn box elder trees rose,
their fluttering leaves rounding out the bass of the river's flowing

now and then a monarch butterfly, bright yellow canvas,
tiger eyes catching the breezes playfully
bringing the lightness of wings to too tall and the cripple's revere

all around them, in the river, a stream of humanity waded,
bound for the next sand bar, a glimpse of the next water hewn cave, or Orderville,
where the canyon had only conceded 20 feet to the Virgin,
where the canyon split mysteriously, split into three.

carrying sticks, backpacks and cameras the humans pushed upwards, onwards
upstream, Europeans French and Spanish, Japanese and Americans of all colours
children with sticks as big as themselves, women holding their daughter's
hands while their husbands immortalized them on negative,
the light reflected by their bodily masses sealed away in the darkness
of the machine until the time of the transfer to photo paper or until

Perhaps, the flash flood, about which all the Rangers talked quietly,
and which was portended by the distant thunder which came
rolling down the canyon to the humans.
The flash flood which would wash all the humans, the butterflys
and the mud down the canyon, the flashflood which all the
Rangers pictures depicted as an angry rush of sticks, so angry that
out of the pictures came the knashing and cracking, the boom of water
which would attend such a flashflood.

But no flood came. The humans kept wading past, to and fro,
smiling greetings, trading information. The canyon walls imperceptibly gave
themselves to the music of the water,
and too tall and the cripple emerged whole from the chocolate caters of the Virgin.
They headed downstream, the chasms of their thinking replaced by the flowing river,
the hidden rocks beneath their feet,
while it slowly dawned on the cripple that only a couple
hundred kilometers to the South Las Vegas sat like a
boil on the desert pulsing humming sucking water and oil out of the desert sands
while naked women flung themselves around poles,
meaty hands pushed slot machine buttons
and thousands and millions of humans dreamt and sweated...

Like a black cloud into the canyon walls, the thought of Vegas grew in the Cripple's mind,
till he could almost hear the laughter,
the jingling of coins, the rustling of extra large pants...