View

Summer before college we
looked for outcroppings
of rhyolite;
a rock
glass-like, that
has been known to
come alive
by earth’s heat and
walk slowly
across the land.

We picked
at the valley floor
with sticks
parted tall grass
while the cool slopes
on either side grew
like trees overhead.

Floods raze the land,
you said, waving
a bent stick at a stream
that was
not quite a river,
only a tame curve visible.
And I thought
such a biblical way of
starting over;
of course
there’s nothing to find here.

Then where?

We knew
what we would see.
Record of a
red hot earth
before the path and
chattering trees,
and the wailing births
of the geologists who
predicted a war
preceding any
in our human history.

Even before the visiting
glaciers that
aligned these mountains,
and the grass that spouted upward
in thin, green shoots
and finally covered the valley floor
like a bandage.

And long
before the two of us–
arms swinging
with each higher step,
stinking
from August sweat
and clumsy
with the weight of our bodies
–cast our two
impressive grey shadows
briefly
against a bulging sky.

“It’s starting to rain.”

Ahead,
someone’s abandoned walking stick
had flowered
and grown leaves.
I took a drink as
we climbed
ever higher.
Over our shoulders
slowly evolving,
an always more perfect view.

-Lulu Liu

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Years ago, I took a trip to Yellowstone with a group of people just like me. It was the first time in my life I’d met anybody like me.
Anyways, I felt like posting some poems.