Cloudland Canyon
You and I are photographers, perched together
at a canyon’s edge, attempting to perceive
the same image. There is hope enough
in the world for a great many things,
but there is no hope for us. We are two
unlikely objects, coming to terms
with the word precipice in two
entirely different ways. Despite our
silence, I can see the way this truth
affects you. Some silences wear you
differently, such as the kind we shared
when I was in my car, and you were
in a different car on a different stretch
of highway. The sorts of silences
we share with everyone but cannot
recollect. To recollect is to suggest
that once we had had this now lost
object, that we had had a space
within ourselves which was constructed
for its containment and for no other
purpose. In mine I have nestled
the impression of stillness. This takes
the form of a body of water. One
which has fallen from the edge
of a cliff. Without our cameras,
we are two people observing
iridescence. The mist which becomes
at the water’s descent, which suggests
its intention to climb. An intention
which, in the end, and in the most
roundabout of ways, is fulfilled.
The moment we share, the one
with our eyes buried deep in our
lenses extends as we practice
a common form of capture. Something
we both understand as a distortion
of the object we imagine. It is only
in the removal of its image from
the solitude of natural continuity
that we simultaneously realize
a waterfall is a distillation of time.
A picture of a waterfall is a picture
of nothing. And when we examine
what we have captured, we do not
see a common prisoner. We see
the place as we each have seen it, and
something different neither one
of us can understand. It is an affect
of the canyon, that morning, on
that day. In another park, on another
day, we might have been two dandelions
on the precipice of explosion.
Noah Leventhal is a graduate of the Great Books Program at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. He also earned an MFA in Poetry Writing from Boise State University. He has published in a handful of journals and has pieces forthcoming from Bending Genres, Eunoia Review, The Inflectionist Review, and Red Ogre Review.