Doris Lynch

Continuum

Wijiji Trail, Chaco Canyon

Inside the cloud-wings of evening, over the orange outcrop of Fajada Butte, heat lightning jags. I wander the ruins of a great house built almost a millennium ago. Each curve of path reveals another rock wall behind which people shared meals, mourned the dead, celebrated the newborn. On winds from the Four Corners, I can almost hear the chanting of Puebloans—just as I did this morning, when three native women wearing long skirts and big-brimmed hats stood on the mesa across from my tent. Turning east, they chanted as the sun’s wide yellow disc rose from a perfectly shaped cleft in the cliff face. The sun’s last rays now pierce through what was once a window, reddening a petroglyph wall. Despite the gathering darkness, I can distinguish handprints much like mine stretching toward the night’s first stars.

racing darkness
racing time
just another mesa shadow

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About the Author

Celebrating her first decade writing haibun, Doris Lynch has recent work in Haibun Today, cho, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, and FemkuMag. She also writes in longer forms.