a four corners chapblog
Greg Perry.......................................Son Rivers

Dig Chase.......................................Chandler Chiller
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SwW-001: In Sandstone

The canyon walls rise all
around. All around me
rise these storied walls of sandstone.
The sandstone rises red to reach
the sky and fill the canyon with high silence.

In the silence of a crevice
in the canyon wall before me,
sandstone has been shaped and
pieced to form a plot of walls,
now ruins in this crevice of a canyon.

But a stream is rushing over
rocks and past a prickly pear
intruding on the canyon silence,
washing all this past and present
towards some rising settlement.

~Son River 2006

SwW-002: No Mystery

It was no mystery that Calvin Crackstone had always suppressed a grand desire to visit the great American Southwest. At least it was no mystery to Calvin Crackstone. What was a mystery to Calvin Crackstone, though, was that autumn night six months ago, the twenty-third of September to be exact. And that's exactly why Calvin Crackstone was thinking of Massachusetts just then, while sitting in an Arizona canyon, staring at some Anasazi ruins in the red rock sandstone just across a stream that spoke to him of things New England that he knew. Or didn't know.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-003: Lightning

He looked up at the ruins in the wide crevice and deep overhang of the canyon sandstone wall. Dark windows stared out at him like the empty eyes of the man he saw that crisp fall night. He remembered it as well as he remembered that petroglyph he saw an hour back. Not the antelope. He wasn't running anywhere. Just sitting in this canyon staring at some ruins. But the lightning zig-zag re-creation of a snake. He wasn't thinking of snakes either. The first lightning of the season would bring them out and the first lightning of the season was yet to come. He was thinking of that sudden bolt in a late September night. And a man shot through with something close to lightning lying on the cool New England ground.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-004: Thunder

It's not a drawing of an antelope
but actually an antelope,
the very soul of antelope,
an antelope of antelopes

―yeah, yeah, yeah―

and it's not a drawing of a rattlesnake,
or not a scribble slither lightning
bolt created with a laser
point of hard rock hunter

―yeah, yeah, yeah―

neolithic-like metallica
but lightning-snake the super
hero born in krypton spring
delivered to this sacred

―yeah, yeah, yeah―

earth of sandstone canyon
desert clay in pottery
designed in blood streaks
now I am that running thunder.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-005: Personally

Calvin Crackstone thought of the mystery this way. All ruins are in the past. That's exactly what he told that Lieutenant from the Mystical Police six months ago. “Lieutenant Heraclitus, as far as I'm concerned, this mess is all in the past.” Of course the Lieutenant saw things in a different light. If the Lieutenant were in this canyon presently, Calvin Crackstone mused, he'd probably cross this canyon stream and investigate those sandstone ruins as if they were still populated by happy Anasazi. He'd see things differently even in this desert light. Just as he did six months ago in that moonlit New England September night. “Look, Mr. Crackstone, all I know is that there's a body over there and so I'm here, and I'd like some answers from you over there.” Calvin listened to the stream running through this desert like a bolt of petroglyphs carved within a silent sandstone canyon wall, remembering what he had said to Lieutenant Heraclitus that New England night six months ago. “If it's all the same to you, Lieutenant Heraclitus, and since it so happens that it's my body over there, this suspect here thinks the issue at hand is strictly personal.” The Lieutenant had the last words though. “Mr. Crackstone, personally, I believe that nothing in this universe is strictly personal.” Even the Anasazi had to laugh at that one.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-006: GS - Anasazi

Can you show me the way to the anasazi caves?

Looking for anasazi home designs and anasazi home designs
     related information?
Native American groups such as the Anasazi settled the area
     that is now Las Vegas about 2300 years ago.
Their name was Anasazi, it means ancient aliens.
I find it interesting that the Hopi had a term Anasazi,
     which meant, "ant people".
The name "Anasazi" has fallen out of favor, but none of
     the other names now used for this vanished civilization
     are satisfactory, either.
I'm sure we have all seen the television shows on
     the mysterious Anasazi Indians.
Now, new research using simulation models suggests
     that the great puebloan people known as the Anasazi
     met their rapid demise in the 14th Century AD as a
     result of a complex set of factors or causes, not
     just climate change
The explosion was so brilliant it was visible during
     the day and was recorded by observers around the world,
     including the Anasazi.

She breaks his priceless Anasazi vase.
It tells the story of Sosi, an Anasazi girl who feels
     more than a little rejected by her family as they stress
     over a drought.
Years before I had heard rumors about an Anasazi ruin.
Well, it appears that snakes with sinister connotations
     are not unknown in Anasazi sites.
There in the dirt lie five hand-sized pieces of a broken
     ancient Anasazi pot.
The Anasazi used many different types of symmetry when
     they painted their pottery.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-007: Next

The desert waited. The desert always waits. It waits for rain. It waits for night. It waits for some visitor from a land of trees and fog on the edge of an ocean to sit within its sandstone canyon and tell its story to the ruins, as he had told it to that Lieutenant of the Mystical Police. Like this. Calvin Crackstone woke that morning six months ago as he had waken every morning for the last thirty-three years. The day progressed as any other ordinary day. Traffic came and traffic went. His job was just like any other job. He was on that negative end of that peculiar American bipolar life, waiting for the positive pole of the weekend. But he should have seen it coming. He should have seen the hand rising from the cloud. He should have seen the lightning bolt emitting from the crowd. He should have seen his body lying on the ground freed from regular employment. And he had. And that's what he had told Lt. Heraclitus from the Mystical Police. And that's when the Lieutenant had told Calvin Crackstone that that's all fine and dandy, but in the world of the Mystical Police, it really doesn't matter “who killed who.” The Mystical Police didn't question the events of death; they investigated the next life instead. And they didn't do it themselves, but instead deputized the body in question to do the work for him or herself. Maybe point out a particular direction. Like Southwest. And then wait for the resultant report.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-008: Bright Angel Shale

Southwest Sonnet

It's the opposite of what I've always known;
Instead of sea, the desert is the lone
immensity.
And canyons fill the earth with mountainous reflection.
But southwest isn't
just the anti-northeast
though.
It's more immeasurable
than Vishnu Schist
or Zoroaster Granite.
Older than the Hopi,
larger than the land
of Navajo, it waits
for no Godot.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-009: GS - Vishnu Schist

Chunks of Old, Tried Vishnu Schist Were Scattered About the Hillside

The black rock of the Vishnu Schist mercilessly absorbs the sun
     and bakes the air.
Life was metamorphosed by other viruses in the DNA like
     the Vishnu Schist.
The bottommost layer does not exist in this sentence: a layer
     of Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite, which is volcanic rock,
     cooled magma and slowly cooled and crystallized rock forms
     raised from the mantle of the Earth.
At 1.7 billion years old, Vishnu schist is some of the oldest rock
     on the planet.
And did you know, there are many points on the Grand Canyon
     that are named "Vishnu Schist (the lowest strata of the canyon
     almost 1.5 billion years old)."
The strata are Dark Gray, Vishnu schist, Tapeats Sandstone.
There are unconformities between the Unkar Group and
     the Vishnu Schist.
The missing geological ages between the Vishnu schist and
     the Tonto are known as the Great Unconformity

A mountain formed and then was eroded and washed away,
     leaving the Vishnu Schist.
Can you say "vishnu schist" 10 times?
Precambrian rocks are first exposed--dark-colored Vishnu Schist
     (and how did that Hindu word for God get on this rock's name
     in the Grand Canyon?)
Vishnu Schist, she called it.
The Vishnu Schist (I love that word) is about 1.8 billion years old.
This black stuff, the heart of the earth, is Vishnu Schist.


~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-010: Four Corner Method

Just the usual suspects, the Lieutenant had told him. “There's only four tracks for you to investigate. But then again, we always look in four directions. It's the way of the Mystical Police. By the book. Our most wanted medicine wheel of sorts,” Lieutenant Heraclitus had said, coming closest to anything like a smile Calvin Crackstone had seen on the Lieutenant. “But you'll have to fill in the particulars, like their names, for example.” At first, it seemed to Crackstone to be an odd assignment. It wasn't that he was opposed to hunting down the usual suspects. But the fact that he had to create the usual suspects seemed a bit unusual. But it was as it was, as it is what it is. So Calvin Crackstone did. In the South, he'd look for Sedona, an innocent-looking redhead with a magnetic personality. In the west, he'd trail Grand Canyon, a deep thinker, forever changeable in moods. In the north, he'd pursue Monument Valley, a strong and silent type who many years ago had married the girl next door, Mystery Valley, as mysterious as her name would suggest.. And finally, in the east, he'd shadow Canyon de Chelly, a kind of visionary character who kept to his own. Just the usual suspects.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-011: The World of Sedona

Another World

The first time we saw
the red rocks of Sedona,

Skye turned to me
and cried, “Oh, Son,

it's like another world!”
And so it was.

And as surprising
as a sunrise

rising from the earth,
that paradise of blood

earth rose
in forms of innocent

creation telling
stories of its genesis

with whirlwind-sculpted
characters in passion

play. “And it's alive,”
I answered Skye.


Driving north
on Arizona Highway

One-seventy-nine
beneath that slickrock

mythological
scenario, we reached

the city of Sedona,
spread below its drama

like an audience
without the wherewithal

to leave the theater after
the final act has played

before their starstruck eyes.
Instead, they remain to watch

the next show and the next,
until they become a rival

show, a fallen body,
and, in fact, another world.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-012: From Phoenix with Coincidence

Ever since I became a private eye, oh say six months or so ago, I've begun to notice that one needs only to look closely at things to see coincidence is king, or queen, in this glittering world. Take for example my initial destination for my latest case, an investigation into the apparent death of Chandler Chiller, a writer of mini-mysteries who happens to look a lot like me. Which is not much of a coincidence because he is, or was, me. But my initial destination for that investigation into Chandler's death and hopeful resurrection was Phoenix, Arizona. Coincidence? I think not. For coincidence is just the rational excuse for unexplained mysteries that bombard us every day like ultraviolet rays, which Phoenix had been experiencing, by the way, for 150 consecutive days until that drought was broken the very day before I landed in that Valley of the Sun. But I wasn't there for sun or Phoenix, although the New England winter had prepared my appreciation for both. No, I was there to meet a woman named Sedona. Or maybe one of her many aliases instead. The Lady of the Rose Earth South, Miss Lonelyhearts and Innocence, or First Direction in my Wheel of Mysteries Still Unexplained. I had procured the directions to her place from a fortune teller named Ramona. “Sedona?” she repeated my request. “That's right. Sedona.” I patiently concurred. “And why Sedona?” she rudely inquired. “I need to see Sedona. That's all you need to know.” I curtly replied. “Well, lucky for you that I happen to know the whereabouts of this Sedona.” she briskly laughed. “It's not luck.” I wisely answered her. “It's something called coincidence.”

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-013: GS - Sedona

Driving the Loop from Phoenix to Sedona Is to Travel from the Past
to Present in the Footsteps of the Famous and Infamous

I met Juliette outside Calling All Angels before
     she moved to Sedona.
Did psychic Sedona really foresee her own death?
As it turns out Sedona hasn't seen rain in over 140 days.
Sedona had been recommended to us, for its lovely red terrain.
I would like to see that cave when I make it to Sedona.
Sedona seemed like a great compromise.
Come to Sedona and soothe your soul.
I wanna send everyone "power" from Sedona.

There were other monologue shows and the last was Sedona.
I had not been to Sedona in ages.
Sedona is just about the perfect distance from our house.
I had the great opportunity this weekend to be spoiled in Sedona.
Through the heart of Sedona, and the realm of mystics,
I am finishing the transition stages of this Chapter
     of my life in Sedona.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-014: Enchanted I'm Sure

She held a gun to my head. I tried my best to ignore the obvious and offered her my binoculars. “If you look closely enough, everything is innocent,” I said. The red rock was glazed with snow from last night's storm and through the glass looked otherworldly. “I stopped believing in innocence after Marlo. Now I believe in the future,” she said. “And I know when somebody wants something from me and you look hungrier than a woodpecker with a headache.” I laughed despite the pressure from the gun pressing at my temple. “Sure, I want to know something,” I said in my best tough-guy slur. “I want to know what happened here.” “What happened? They tried to build themselves enchantment,” she laughed. The gun was a forty-five automatic circa nineteen-fifty-two and the damage it could do was legendary. My universe was encountering a black hole for the very first time. But I tried to ignore the possibilities outlined in the laws of physics and concentrated instead on the present conversation. “I don't understand,” was the best I could offer. “Boynton Canyon,” she sighed, and turned the gun on herself. “Barbed wire,” she gasped. “No!” I screamed and tried to knock the gun from her hand. “The Enchantment Resort,” she almost died laughing. The sound was like a crack of thunder even though the flash was just a small electric shock. “The Enchantment Gulag's more like it,” she left her last words in my care.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-015: Miscarriage in a Canyon

In Boynton Canyon, vortex
by Sedona, sky-
magnetic red rock spires
rising on each wall
emitting light scintilla
arcing over slickrock,
sage, and junipers
with spirit-altering
nativity, they built
a luxury resort
and christened it Enchantment.

Barricaded by
a sentry guardhouse turning
uninvited traffic
from its sanctuary,
and a string of barbed wire
bordering a trail
that skirts the southern wall,
it sits like some adobe
prison, housing damned
big misconceptions of
the essence of enchantment.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-016: GS: Enchantment

Enchantment Pet Resort and Spa Indeed.

In an age of increased interest in mystical,
     mythical, mysterious, questions, wonder, enchantment,
     black holes, and anti-metanarrative,
I need Fireflies around me to have this kind of enchantment.
In the land of enchantment, tamales, enchiladas, posole
     and beans all smothered with the spicy goodness of chile,
blue was inspired by the enchantment of twilight.
I ordered a large cut of Enchantment for Fairy Moon and
     a large cut of Oceantide for Mermaids of the Deep Blue
as I come out of my coma. My curiosity and wonder are coming
     to the tea party bearing the gifts of enchantment and zeal.
Personally, I think if you do lose your sense of enchantment
     with the world, it's not the fault of science really;
the cogs and gears of enchantment are not built with
     tolerance for failure.

I departed with few of the fools to get the drink of enchantment.
The magical enchantment this snake possessed was convincing.
How dare you market a perfume with my signature Enchantment
     name at Wal-Mart!
Our culture often takes pride in disproving and exploding
     the sources of enchantment.
We are planning to launch the first billboards here
     in the Land of Enchantment:
The Enchantment Is In the Marrow.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-017: The Mystery of the Red Rock Woman

But Sedona wasn't dead. Her suicide, or I should say her attempted suicide, was like a western storefront or some brand new suburban McMansion. All facade. “Blanks!” I yawped when I saw the lack of blood, the chest still breathing. She opened a single eye and winked, “Just because I've lost my innocence doesn't mean I've lost my sense of play.” I quickly gathered my wits. No way I was going to let her get the upper hand, no matter how shocked I might have been. “I don't believe in innocence anyways,” I mumbled in my best nonchalant manner. “Not sure why not,” she answered. “It's all around you.” “No kids around here,” I said. “Children aren't innocent, Mr. Chiller. Only the moment is.” So she wanted a philosophical duel I thought to myself. I can zen. Aloud I said, “Tell that to the past.” She frowned, “Ah, but isn't that the culprit?” “What is? Living in the past?” I asked. “Not exactly,” she answered. Suddenly I remembered I was investigating a murder, sent here by the Metaphysical Police to do a job. And here before my very ears was a witness discussing one, and all I could do was counter her by being one with aloofness. That wouldn't do. So I questioned her directly. She hesitated. Clouds rolled in from the west. A shadow crossed the red rock. Sedona glowed. “Living for the future,” she answered.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-018: KJVS: Innocent

Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls
     of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret
     search, but upon all these

Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent
     person. And all the people shall say, Amen.
Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent?
     or where were the righteous cut off?
Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent
     and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.
If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at
     the trial of the innocent.
I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou
     wilt not hold me innocent.
Upright men shall be astonished at this, and the innocent
     shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.
The righteous see it, and are glad: and the innocent
     laugh them to scorn.
He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is
     delivered by the pureness of thine hands.

I am clean without transgression, I am innocent; neither
     is there iniquity in me.
So he that goeth in to his neighbour's wife; whosoever
     toucheth her shall not be innocent.
A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that
     maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.
He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh
     reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things
     shall never be moved.
He may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and
     the innocent shall divide the silver.
Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate
     wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah,
     because they have shed innocent blood in their land.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-019: The Future of 1968

Living Additive Free

The future comes to me
in Nineteen Sixty-Eight
with Robert Kennedy
to misappropriate
the future. Never trust
Los Angeles stardust.

It fills the TV screen
with something unforeseen
like Martin Luther King
or Mister Tambourine
beneath the desert skies
of crazy sorrow's lies―

conspiracies of green,
the Washington machine,
old Eisenhower's complex.
Nothing tests our reflex
like losing innocence
before experience.

The future didn't stay;
it disappeared in time.
It's still not here today.
Instead, the paradigm
of past and present lives―
without preservatives.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-020: GS: The Future

In fact, the likeliest path for the future of
     user-created content is derivative works.

They were certain of the future. It was the past
     that kept changing.
The past was never over, the future had always begun.
When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.
Our roots are clearly set in the future, as
     the Arab poet Adonis wrote it.
This is beyond cool, this is the future!
Any technical architecture is about planning for
     and anticipating the future.
It makes no sense to erect ideological roadblocks
     to the miracles of the future.
If the creator of the language is perceived as
     a blocker to the future of the language there is
     obviously something wrong.

He could see into the future and admitted consulting
     imaginary mystic dwarfs.
If he cares about the future as he claims he does,
     it would mean that he would have to stop fucking around.
I will not allow gaming skills of the future to be
     inherent to the common couch potato.
The robots also have to compete against technologically
     augmented humans, whom I suspect will be the real
     force of the future.
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise, and this
     storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future.
In the future, we will all have jet-powered cars.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-021: Towards Tsakurshovi

Don't Worry, Be Hopi
from the t-shirt created by
Tsakurshovi Arts and Crafts Gallery
on Second Mesa, Hopiland

Innocence will die
a thousand deaths with every life
insurance policy we purchase
at expense of present interest
rates our full involvement
benefits our burial
before appreciation
of the cormorant
and silver river, simple
sailboat, lighthouse, blue
Atlantic Ocean.

Innocence will die
a never-ending death with each
retirement concern that daily
overturns the simple
sailboat sailing on the silver
present stream of consciousness
expanding from the desert
sage to constellations
raining on parades
of canyons cutting through
the mesas of my mind.

Innocence will die
a lifeless painted desert
colored in a monochrome
today without a single
Hopi for the purple
corn that's planted in
the winter-irrigated sands
of generations blooming
in their day instructing
children with Kachina dolls
returning knowledge of
creation to their play.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-022: Into Introspection

After Sedona, I wandered west, her testimony still ringing innocently in my ears. But I knew I needed to delve a little deeper than the present, and there was no one better than Grand Canyon for that job, not only a notorious deep thinker but a reputable historian with degrees in shale and schist as well as a not-too-shallow interest in wind and water. I intoduced myself and let him know my business. His eyes were layered with time itself. They didn’t exactly look through you; you fell into them. There was a stony silence as I plummeted towards the past. But before I hit the pre-cambrian, I heard his welcome. “You should watch your step, son. The world is and always has been one hard place.”

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-023: Destination Anticipation

Anticipating South Rim

Some fifty epochs later
from a desert rise,
I see a gulf extending
in the looming distance.
The sun is illuminating
the far-off sterling shore,
while the bay appears sublimely
blue like polished turquoise
placed within a skylit

setting. Heavenly,
except I apprehend
it’s Arizona and
the ocean is some several
compasses away.
Grand Canyon is a sea
of atmosphere abounding
inbetween the stratums
amassed in expectation.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-024: Bipolar World of Rim and River

After our initial introduction, it dawned on me that Grand Canyon was not the talkative kind, and that I’d have to delve into his thoughts in order to perform this interrogation. And his thoughts were layered with the unfolding history of the earth. And although each thought was like a different sediment of rock, and each sediment led to a different sentiment, there was one constant in it all: the never-ending pressure of the present. There it was five thousand feet below as it once would have been at my feet five-hundred million years ago. The river created this illusion of the past, this hole in the ground, this cause of a great depression. At this I saw him smile as if I had been reading his mind.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-025: Twelve Bar Views

Grand Canyon Blues

An emptiness is drawing every
atom of my life into
its rock-hard cavity as ravens
slowly circle down towards murky
coconino sandstone, hermit
shale, then river rapids running
over zoroaster granite.

O I feel so sad and lonesome
that I hang my head and fly.

Wind is blowing through the canyon
in my soul conceived in ancient
history and dedicated
to the principle of past
and past the desert desiccation
of my heart as hard as vishnu
schist and zoroaster granite.

O I feel so sad and lonesome
that I hang my head and cry.

Sun is shriveling my life
in lizard scales of logarithmic
memories and dark formations
from my childhood fossils captured
in the quartz emotional
depression limestone metamorphic
echoes zoroaster granite.

O I feel so sad and lonesome
that I hang my head and die.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-026: GS The Past

The Demons That Keep Rising Up From The Past
to both obsession with and blindness to the past

Some of you may remember my earlier diaries over the past
probably won't take as many roadtrips over the summer
     as I have in the past.
Many of us have played out "what if" scenarios about
     this kind of thing in the past
without apology and without encumbrances from the past
have had nuanced positions in the past.
For acquiring data which is reaching farther into the past,
you're going to build a bridge from the past to the future
before you go reminiscing about how much better the past was.

I'm betting some of you have given this issue a bit
     of thought in the past
but to my eye the substance often remains amazingly akin
     to that of the past.
If you’ve struggled with persona development in the past
language is more or less bare of allusion to the past,
or turning their back on the outdated methods of the past
briefings will continue as they have in the past.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW-027: Unintelligible

Not talkative at all, that Grand Canyon, and stubborn like a mule. I was guessing he was the strong and silent type when he interrupted my inner dialogue with a question. “So tell me kid, why have you always wanted to see me?” I looked at him sideways, keeping the river vertical in my vision. “I’ve only wanted to see you since six months or so ago. To talk to you about a recent death.” He turned the tables and looked deep inside of me, “Not the whole truth, kid. You’ve wanted to see me for almost all your life.” And damned if he wasn’t right. And damned if I really knew why. Something about the view, true, but something deeper than that too. “You seem to know a lot about it, Professor,” I laughed, “so you tell me.” He answered in his native Precambrian tongue. “Exactly!” I cried.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-028: Sing Woman, Dawn On

Sunrise Grand Canyon

The canyon rides the sunrise like
a rider in the quiet waking
household after household more
than miles apart from one another.
More than light is dawning on
the canyon buttes and temples. More
than my desire for views is being

satisfied this morning. Something
deeper is emerging from
the darkness saturated with
a geological expression.
Something left unsaid is being
calculated by the nano-
second. Nothing marks the limits

of our life like some big hole
within the earth and nothing shall
illuminate our destiny
a little more than emptiness
made manifest by dawn. And I’m
not sure just what it is but I’m
sure blessed to be a part of it.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-029: Professor Canyon with a Lead Pipe

“So, Professor Canyon, except for a sunrise of two, I’d have to say, considering all the anticipation, notwithstanding the incredible depths and vast expanse of ever-changing colors, is that all there is?” Of course, Canyon didn’t say a word. “I was expecting revelations, an apocalypse of the very soul, maybe the four horsemen themselves riding through the sky and all I got was a few ravens in some deep illusion of a bottomless earth.” Of course Canyon remained silent. “I mean don’t get me wrong. It’s exhilarating enough. Just the thought that at the edge of almost any viewpoint a fall of some five-hundred feet awaits the careless spectator is enough to put a visitor on edge. But I was thinking of something a bit more mind-blowing.” Silence. The sun went in and out of clouds. Colors changed. Depths varied. “And really, you’ve been absolutely no help at all. Haven’t given me a clue. Oh, sure, I know the past is here before my eyes.” Canyon coughed, “Don’t live in the past.” I laughed, “Easy for you to say. Your very reality is past.” Canyon coughed again, “Don’t live in the past.” I flew off the handle, “Don’t live in the past. Don’t live in the past. That’s all you seem to say. But I know, and you know, that you’re nothing but the past.” Canyon coughed one more time, “OK you’re really beginning to irritate me with all this pomp and expectation. The past. The past. You look at me and you think you see the past. But what you see are the textures of the present. Let me tell you something son. If you ever decide to climb down this canyon, you had better not scramble in the past, or you’ll find yourself falling faster than you can say ‘Colorado River’.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-030: Leaving

Grand Canyon, Earth

The last time I surveyed Grand Canyon,
clouds were parting, opening
a moment for the sun to light
the layers of that surgically-
exposed creation with its healing
touch. Like everything alive,
it’s just an open nerve. Aware,
you should be careful how you view it.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-031: Arriving in Navajoland

Approaching Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

A sandstorm dances with a mesa
in the distance, dreaming up
a copper blind between the valley

beyond and the desert ground
we travel. What would John Wayne do?
He’d bless his horse and ride on through

without a single thought of what
uncertainties awaited him,
except they waited for his presence.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-032: To the Glittering World...

A Glittering Sonnet

We took the tour and saw the glittering
in all its facets from the Anasazi
ruins to John Ford’s Point. An Indian,
our guide instructed us in ceremony
and the commonplace. It all began
with Monster Slayer. Then, Kit Carson broke
the people from their land. Returning after
years of separation and disorder,
they were blessed again with arid living.
Lately though, drought was turning desert life
to something lesser than a livelihood.
I asked her if they thought it global warming.
“The Navajo don’t have a word for that.”
They know who regulates that thermostat.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-033: Monumental Inscriptions

It started off with El Capitan but soon I hit the harder stuff, to paraphrase a great poet. North to see Monument Valley and his lover, Mystery. I knew the both of them were considered wise beyond their years, and I thought this time, unlike the awkward beginnings with Sedona and Grand Canyon, I’d try to impress them in the area of their interest, using my intellectual capacity for facts and other raw information. “I understand there’s forty named buttes and dozens of unnamed ones around here. According to Encyclopedia Topic, the floor is largely Cutler Red siltstone. Its sand was deposited by the meandering rivers that carved the valley. The valley's vivid red color comes from iron oxide exposed in the weathered siltstone. The buttes, some rising to 1000 feet high, are clearly stratified. The lowest layer is Organ Rock shale, the middle de Chelly sandstone and the top layer is Moenkopi shale capped by Shinarump siltstone. John Ford directed John Wayne here in such classic films as Stagecoach and The Searchers.” I basked in my intelligence like some desert sage in the four corners territory. Monument looked at me with something bordering the states of light disdain, sympathetic pity, and dry humor. “So tell me something I don’t know,” he said.

~Chandler Chiller 2006

SwW-034: In Mystery Valley

Anasazi Framing

Wedged within a sandstone ledge,
an Anasazi ruin waits
for no one. But our guide, despite
her Navajo aversion to
such places of abandonment,
allows her visitors to scramble
towards its walls, and even enter
in. “Why do you wait,” she says
to my own hesitation. So
I climb the slope and reach the single
unit no appliances or running
water built by hands that now

adorn the nearby cavern walls
with handy messages of raw
existence some one-thousand years
before a single European
had begun interpreting
these lives with data mined by hands
concerned with somewhat scientific
theories of where those hands
exactly went and why. I enter
through the open door and sit
upon the sandy floor and look
right through that sudden opening.

~Son Rivers 2006

SwW-035: GS Wisdom

Can Wisdom Exist Outside Human Consciousness?
"the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom
that America has yet contributed."

The vacuous wisdom of the Brat Boy
embodies so much primordial wisdom,
charming kids with the wisdom of wordsmithery,
purveyors of the slightly stale conventional wisdom.
The collective saloon-bar wisdom,
stumbling around for dubious wisdom,
a word of wisdom from a dog who's maybe lived too long,
can't decide whether this is wisdom or resignation.

Google in its mysterious wisdom
discovered, invented or got enlightened
     through divine wisdom,
in his magnificently malevolent bastard wisdom,
her near-infinite wit and wisdom—
and digesting the wisdom of great desingers
were wont to show their weather wisdom.

~Dig Chase 2006

SwW The End: Anasazi Rising

Presently at Mummy Cave Ruins

It’s lunchtime in the canyon and
the tour bus stops near Mummy Cave
allowing sightseers footloose time
to rest their eyes and grab a bite
to eat. Attracted by the terra
cotta Anasazi ruins
so close to me I almost see
there’s no one home behind the open

windows, I wander down a gully
towards a brook that separates
the site from trespassers aspiring
to confiscate its mystery,
the closest spot to sit and dwell
on legendary structures built
before a single European
soul mistook this world for new.

The Anasazi built this place
with hand-shaped stones and mud clay mortar.
Pinyon beams protrude in places.
Resting underneath the sandstone
overhang of rising canyon
walls, the ruins persevere
in level-headed testimony
to artisans that disappeared.

No archeologist can tell
you where these ancients went. I know
that some believe they’re Hopi
now or other Pueblo people
—and some don’t rightly know—although
this brook is interrupting all
beliefs with its unfixed effusions
suggesting the living are never leaving.

~Son Rivers 2006