Jenny’s Slot Canyon, Evening, Late November

These desert canyon walls are black from years

of rain. The water paints it so and stains

the varnish dark, a kind of anguish we

weren’t here to see. This place a ribcage, slick

and tight, each wave of rock a rung to climb,

a foothold carved from wind’s fine blade. We too

are wild and honey-combed, the fissures deep

inside us know too well the pains of age.

In this monastic space, where light and dust

conspire and ruminate, we face ourselves,

our bodies brittle, tinged with slow decay.

But in the winter light, in day’s last rays

of gold, our sons are bright and manifold.

We’ll tell our love until the telling’s old.

Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s most recent work can be found in Western Humanities Review, New Ohio Review, Ruminate, and South Dakota Review. She is the author of The Marriage of the Moon and the Field (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and The Ache & The Wing (winner of Sundress Publications’ 2020 Chapbook Prize). Her work has been awarded New Ohio Review’s NORward Poetry Prize, the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and the Sherwin W. Howard Award and was runner-up for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. She teaches at Weber State University and lives in northern Utah with her husband and three sons.