By Keith Esposito
Welcome to the Land of Vermilion.
Welcome to the Perfect land.
Where red rock cliff faces stare down on us,
weathered-wise cleaves of limestone set below the broad,
scrubtree brow of the plateau, tattooed with chutes and boulder spill offs,
the wrinkles of the washes,
where monsoon streams splay off into veins,
feeding down to the purple clay and muddy springs,
before dying away into the valley weed at our feet.
I’ll be your guide today, point out the sights,
don’t be scared by my black wings and balding head,
don’t be concerned by the tags on my arms, sensors on my
back,
see the Land of Vermillion is the land of species that
refuse to die,
we learn to take it one day at a time.
Find a sour carcass every few weeks, avoid the power lines
and shiny shotgun muzzles, feed my daughter.
And teach her it’s an honor to be a number, one out of
almost 200 hundred now, and every one of us counts,
and these blood-filled eyes cut landscape into time and
space.
Turn around, take it in.
This is the land of big sky and wide prairies,
the graveyard of long-past grasslands and buffalo,
sandy, windswept soil
that once boasted 50,000 heads of cattle,
chewed down to the nubs of sick-white salt weed and still
playing host to horned lizards and cacti.
This is the land of yesterdays and tomorrows,
invasive trees growing inside experimental land plots,
half finished arrowheads and pottery shards buried in the
soil next to irrigation pipes and cattle guards,
field mice crawling across the highway median
This is the land of sunrises that last well over an hour,
savor it as the sky takes it’s sweet ass time to wake up,
from the first thin line of red against the black,
to the overwhelming yellow warmth once the orb finally burns
off the last clouds,
to the flicker of rare greens that are almost too fast for
your retina,
and the knowledge that the world is here to say
Good Morning
every day,
whether we’re awake for it or not.
So go on and take our your camera now,
it’s ok I know you want some pictures,
don’t feel bad, that’s what all the others do too.
Just as long as you realize that when you try and freeze
this moment it’s not even close, something as perfect as this land defies the
capture of single seconds,
‘cause just as you pushed that button another boulder
spilled down the cliff face,
in the land where sandstone disintegrates with the press of
your pinky, after a handful of instants, that photo’s already history.
Don’t believe me?
Well, come up here real quick; let me give you the bird’s
eye on this one.
You would call this land beautiful, but from up here you can
see the abandoned Uranium mines,
scars left from the rape,
that still emit the poisonous puss of infection.
You would call this land pristine,
but see those junked out ghost ranches where someone had a
bad season and threw in the towel,
made their broken refrigerators and rotting wood fences
someone else’s problem.
The land of Vermilion is also the land
of unhealed wounds,
of broke-down dreams,
of lifeless deserts,
of constantly collapsing rock cathedrals
Just like your home.
The difference is your Perfect is list of extraordinary
seconds from your past that you stick still in photo albums,
isolated moments you can pluck out and preserve from the bustle
of everyday life
But here, in the land of Vermillion, Perfection, it’s a
process—
when the prairie stays parched,
when extracting machines rip up our insides,
when lead shells take the life of my daughter,
We point no fingers.
We just shrug our shoulders,
let the loose boulders roll down our arms
and go to work on the next sunrise
It’s ok if you disagree, I just ask for one favor:
Make sure on your drive out you take a look back up at those
cliffs.
The limestone cap,
the sandstone spread,
the purple clay roots,
all the layers and all the time,
embracing the rain that exposed all its colors,
and the floods that cracked and tore off its features,
realizing that time is the gift of finding the next best
thing.
Take care now, have a safe drive…
I hope you can come back sometime.
Who knows?
Maybe by then we’ll have
a new egg to place up on the plateau.
And together we can watch as it cracks,
watch as it splits apart,
watch new wings
break open.
Keith Esposito was an Alternative Spring Break volunteer with GCT in 2011 from Boston University. He is now in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. Click here to watch Keith perform his poem at a Speak for Yourself event at Boston University.
