Zion Poem by Ken Nye

I saw God today.

Emerging from the darkness of a
mountain tunnel,
I am stunned by giant pillars of red stone,
monolithic,
mountainous,
majestic.

I see swirls of multi-colored rock, once mud and sediment,
flung from one end of the canyon
to the other, a huge clay platter
thrown on
God’s potter's wheel;
massive mountain slopes criss-cross etched,
like graph paper;
giant arches, displaying
the unfathomable creative powers of wind
and rain
and time,
God's tools in the creation
of glory.

I heard God today.

Standing in the cool mist floating over us
from the stream of water falling into
the Emerald Pools,
I hear in the silence
only the staccato splashes
of the water not vaporized
by the breeze before it hits the canyon floor
and trickles into the still green saucers of sandstone.
The music of that mountain stream
speaks a language without words,
understood in our hearts.

I felt God today.

Sitting on a rock with my feet
dangling in the light brown water of
the Virgin River,
I sense the presence of a spirit of life

and creation,
an unbounded force not seen,
not heard as an entity in itself,
so grand in imagination and
generous in the conception and creation of
this world of unimagined beauty
that the mortal viewer can only overflow,
like a river,
with wonder.

Zion Canyon,
valley of peace and solitude,
cathedral of the living God
sculpting beauty
beyond our comprehension.


Written upon returning from a trip to Zion National Park, Utah.