FW: VVA: Garden of the Gods 02/08/15

 Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 05:06:46 -0500

Subject: VVA: Garden of the Gods 02/08/15
From: vva@vva2.talklist.com
To: vva@vva2.talklist.com

Garden of the Gods    02/08/15

The rocks remember.

The rills and swirls

Of ancient currents

In vanquished rivers

And time stopped tides

Forever frozen

In the lazy looping curves

Etched into the eroded

Rust painted grains

Of cemented quartz.
      ~

Tilted to vertical

Sandstone slabs

Thrust from the earth.

Rocks of record

to a time-lost past...

A boundary place

Neither plain

Not mountain,

A halfway house

Between two vast

Related realms.
      ~

Stunted but tough,

The native scrub oak

Colors the seasons,

Green counterpoint

Late spring to summer,

Red, gold and bronze

Decorate autumn dales

And drab brown deserted

Remnants stiffly defy

The whip winds of winter.
      ~

The carvings scoured

From peaks to west

Are father to the flats

of plains to east.

Wind and water

Still write the story,

The record of

Nature's reckonings.

And the rocks remember.

      - Gerald Alan Ney