At the mouth of the canyon
an old woman bent under a large backpack hurried past me.
Later I was told that she was Dorothy Wordsworth, of whom Sam Coleridge
said, "If you
expected to see a pretty woman you would think her ordinary; if
you expected to see an
ordinary woman you'd think her pretty!" She also wrote remarkable
lines, such as, "The
moon shone like herrings in the water," in midst of a drought!
Rocks with "fine
white lines, fine as the wrinkles in an old lady's face,"
breathe
heavy
and slow; one breath
for every
moon left
unseen.