Canyon de Chelly
Kim Roberts
Sometimes we got there first
but usually the other car did,
and perched at the corner
nearest the trail, so we were locked
in a two-step with this other
tourist couple, dutifully
following the park road
, reading all the historic signs,
reading all the nature signs,
never missing a designated
trail or scenic pullout.
Designed for summer crowds,
those empty parking lots
were comically huge,
with their painted arrows,
the echoing chambers
of their Comfort Stations.
We were tired.
We'd been on the road
two weeks, our eyes filled
with scenic views, near
the end of our journey.
The other couple was fighting
and we had to hear it, the exposed
rasp of his annoyance,
the high whine of her need.
And so the russets and vermillions
of the sheer cliff face
became his anger,
the intricate petroglyphs
became her hurt, and the small huts
of the historic Navajo village
far down below began to feel
trapped by the afternoon's
widening shadow, and we
couldn't shake them,
lingering along the trail,
or reading the signs and racing ahead,
they were still there,
in their sad brown
Lincoln Continental, exploring
the canyon of Interpersonal Skills
under the famous open skies
of the great American Southwest.
e-mail: contact@kimroberts.org
