On Rafting the Grand Canyon

From Switzerland, also the land of the Queen,
From Maui to Boston and lives in between,
We gather like babes in the womb of the earth
Immersing ourselves in the gap in her girth.
Each turn we descend makes us ever more small,
‘Til embryos just on the great mother’s wall.
Callus-like sediment covers her skin
And hard rock below from her great heat within.
Shedding our cell phones and lives clean and dry
We’re absorbed in the river and cliff-focused sky.
We’re humbled and tumbled as she works to deliver
Our small group of souls down her life-giving river.
Where did we come from, how were we conceived?
Our lifetime seems puny, so little perceived
Of the billion year history she bares for our view;
It jumbles perceptions, starts thinking anew.
We cannot ignore our own unconformity –
Our existence so brief in earth-time enormity.
At the end, we’re delivered, wet and shivering like birth,
We twenty-three brothers and sisters of earth.