A Place 

(for nic)

2,170 miles away exists a place.

It’s 76,519 acres—millions of square feet long

and wide. An anomaly really, how beauty exists

in such measurements, in my mind. A stretch of

red fins tower into a cobalt sky, or does the sky

dive down to meet it? Heaven meets earth meets

this place where I cried as we drove, you and me,

learning that life should be this:  

becoming humbled by rocks. 

This place has a mailbox that doesn’t

deliver what I can’t put to poetry: I miss you. And

that place we placed our tent stood by the river

where we washed our faces and dishes before we 

continued to climb on thick slabs of rock into the sunrise.

We’ll go back is what we promised, to the place

with fins and arches and millions of words

I don’t understand. And with cold beer and thick socks

we’ll go back to everything that happened and didn’t,

every blink and breath.