Grand Canyon, North Rim

For my brother 

The canyon is in the pines, 
you find it there in sharps and flats, 
rush at the edge, a thousand 
improvisations of rain, needles, light fall. 

You run the empty space between 
canyon mouth and sky, lungs 
heaving, sucking air. 

When she left you,  
took your four boys, 
the sun burned your retinas,  
resurrecting a husk in its place. 
Beyond this, what wraiths? 

The Edenic sky fading to a 
dim howl, hallucinations of love, 
reverberations of faces. 
You run still, bitterroot underfoot, 
canyoned cry of jay, 
thunder guttering at the cliff. 

It all ends too quickly, 
this one short life. 
The thunder has stopped 
but the sound keeps coming 
out of the canyon.