The canyon losing definition as the sun breaks toward the Uinkarets, a tented line of volcanos to the west.  Declivities dissolve into dusky and soft shapes.  Cavities fill, first with light, and then swell with darkness.  Bereft of the contours chiseled from the day’s youth, the sandstone at the very ledge of North Rim is buffed to pillows for my tired and boney ass. Flies buzz and land on the carcasses of stone, backlit like flakes of ash from the long dead volcanos spread in a chain up from the river farther west, from Vulcan’s Throne along the rim at Toroweap.  All the chasms settle with murky light, soft and windswept and amber.  The cliffs of the Inner Gorge, serrated teeth, mesh on either side of the wending river, chiseled defiles no more as the embered light descends on them, oblique, gentle, yet smothering, all-consuming. A death each dusk. Pulling sharp shape from the stone until the Canyon, burned beyond recognition, collapses to dark ruins.  Exalted yet swept clean of contour by the soft, blinding embrace.  Azure shifts to indigo, heated in a crucible to the meltpoint of the bullion shafts that fan out from beneath the horizon at Mount Trumbull.

Given time, all things, even majesty, serene in death.  Struggle transmutes into relinquishment, a gentle yielding of stillness to stillness.  All the action played out, the taking of the life from the day a shortened passage of seasons.  In the union of day and night, the twilit bardo of dark rust bestows beauty, grants peace.

© 2022 by Michael C. Just

Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.

You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23

Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002

Four of his short stories have recently been published online:

Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)

The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW

I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October

Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within