How to Explain

This poem was first published in Monterey Poetry Review

Written after rafting in the Grand Canyon

The rock is not dark 
like a Black Ruby plum,
not brilliant as cinnabar or Egyptian red.
The water does not throw herself
in tangles of white lace 
from the indigo ledge to a Nile-green river.
The cavern can’t stretch her mouth quite wide enough
for a hundred horses to gallop through 
with shudders of breath 
and the pouring sweat of flank abrading flank.
 
You must scrape away every layer of skin
and cast your being onto a-cappella foam 
in fearless rapids
until thunder shouts from your eyes.