Red Rock Canyon Poem by Gordon R Menzies

Strange things swam in red summers gone
freshets slipping through my fingertips
the cool of mountains dripping from lips
as we press deeper into wet, red womb
the years laid down on either side like
autumn leaves pressed flat between
wax paper on God's old ironing board
bits of conversation fall down on us
like the echoes of another age, while
we fondle river stone memories below
I am caught like a fallen tree here
In the rush of springs watery rage
stripped of bark, bleached and dead
faces look down from high wooden bridge
I am not a man here, I am only landscape
I touch the slippery red lips of history
channel the Devonian, keep cold company
with trilobite and horseshoe crab
listen to their songs in falling water