Sunrise on a Canyon Wall

This season a dried riverbed
runs through my mind as I 
try to summon what hides

in sandstone caverns smoothed
with brushes dipped
in citrus rose and lavender.

I wait in an arched courtyard
awash in a new sun, not fool’s
gold gleam but a lantern beam 

cast by the first soothsayer. 
Two hunters stare, cradling 
weapons like babies in their arms. 

A jagged seam quavers down 
a cliff spire, ripping an immense
river tree that flows into clouds.

I watch. The noon sun unveils
petroglyphs, spirals, human arms 
upraised, claiming ancient victory.

Wavy lines, snakes or trails, antelope,
horns curved back, race on finite rock
to infinity. I fly with the herd. 

An unseen path through tight stone
leads to my laptop’s midnight glare, 
first line inclines, switchback

rewrites with no guardrails. A final
blind turn, I plummet to the canyon floor.
With cupped hands, I drink. A sheen 

of words streams to my final line.
Tan fur, flickering white tail, 
an antelope flees a form of itself.

Christine Jackson is retired and still recovering from her day job, three decades of teaching literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry. Her work has been published in an array of online journals, including Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Verse News, and Anti-Heroin Chic.