No rush for this Mt Rushmore.
No precedent for these presidents,
Stacked and bundled together,

deformed artifacts

Layered stories of once-bodies, Paiutes in stone implying Medicine far beyond this narrow view.

Ancient paintings of some long past Picasso in rock, profiles in red of the red man,

the long-gone man, the primal man, the earthling (semi) permanent man, the walks-in-silence man and the never was-man at all

What river was this, now frozen, carving this edifice, this work of water, the legacy of water

the after-image of water in stone,
the message of water in the timeframe of water

the humor and play of water

earth makes diatoms and earth has made this….

…..is still making this, as
water is making this body today and tomorrow…

an orange river ripples and flows through my veins, marking time

in the orange rock, down the canyon of shards, the fallen, the incomprehensible

display of a random, egalitarian past

I am made again by this, preliminary, unformed,
uninformed of my place in this petrified library

                                           The ground resounds with
                                           the echo of an impossible stillness

as inexorable forces far beyond our comprehension
shape our lives