The Grand Canyon

(National Park Service silkscreen poster
for Grand Canyon National Park, 1938)

“Simplification of outward life is not enough. It is merely the outside. But I am starting with the outside. I am looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life — the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living. This is only a technique, a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001), American writer and aviator, from Gift from the Sea

THE GRAND CANYON

As if there were instead some limit
To this world which follows where we go;
As if we could renounce the many
Habits we acquired long ago;
As if we could embrace the infinite
Spaces we traverse like falling snow;
Or as if we ourselves had any
Substance, and were present; even so,
Just when we are ready to admit
Defeat we find ourselves on this plateau
Staring out across long violet
Reaches filling up with indigo.

~ Stephen Lefebure, American poet