Wind and water carve caverns deep into the earth. Even rock succumbs. What has cut into your center? Time with its inevitable erosion of possibilities, the daily scraping of indignities and small injustices, the crumbling under pressure of expectations, grinding loneliness, the whittling of small worries, the shattering of grief and loss? What remains? A fragile spindle or an obelisk, row upon row of jagged teeth, spirals and staircases into shadow? What is your bedrock?
Write a poem of yourself as cavern or canyon that you used all of your vacation time to visit. Be the ultimate tourist to your center, armed with selfie stick and clad in souvenir T-shirt to yourself. Choose the refrigerator magnet of your erosion, the postcard to your chisel. Find beauty in your sculptured self. You have earned your place as monument, as state park, as the 39th Wonder of the World. Bring a flashlight and a speculum. You are worth the price of admission and the attention.
