Filthy with Detail

What great narrative captures
Even any structural arcs
Of the linear, loose spirals

Of roughly repetitive
Lived experience? Stories
Aren’t for capturing what is,

But are all weirdly lyric
In the end, experience
Themselves, linear loose spirals

As you experience them,
Over and over again,
Going to the Grand Canyon

With your family at ten,
The heat and dust on the edge
Of the leaning, milling crowd,

Striving for experience,
To capture exact details
In snapshots for anecdotes,

Revisiting a decade
And a half later, adult
In a sudden March snowstorm,

The void a chalice of swirls
Mind broke to hold and detail,
Revisiting a decade

And a half later, middle-
Aged with a viewing partner,
North Rim in clear October,

A whole sunrise from rich dark
To the blinding details
Below Point Imperial,

A half a decade later,
Alone and somewhat mourning
A solemn blue afternoon,

Another decade later
Ready, almost, to lean out
And fall from Angel’s Landing,

A half a decade later,
Another surprise snowstorm
Waited out in a cabin,

Another surprise snowstorm
Waited out, then waded out
Through drifts filthy with detail.