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Posts Tagged ‘san miguel river’


 
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall 
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. 
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No Worst, There Is None”
 
 
We fear the cliff, the dangerous edge, 
but here on the banks of the San Miguel River, 
I see how even the cliff is in service to life—
how even in the steepest reaches of the canyon, 
the blue spruce and pinion pine grow tall
in the crumbling layers of red-sandstone walls
as if to prove how little ground life needs to flourish,
how the smallest bit of soil can sustain a great tree.
The mind, too, has cliffs, and sometimes 
they frighten me, but what if they, too, 
are not just heights from which to fall, but 
vital places to explore what happens in the layers, 
places where we see what has been here before, 
exposed. What if the cliff is not a place to resist, 
but an invitation to witness unfathomed growth?

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