Delicate Arch

Photo by Ellie Snyder

We plod up the steep avenue of Entrada Sandstone
with other tourists, turn a right corner and there it stands,
the Chaps. Evan is in another teenager mood. You and I
find a spot to sit on the panhole’s slope below the crowd
of photographers with precarious tripods waiting for sunset.
Mary’s Bloomers straddle space, bronze in steeping light,
lumpy, impossible, perfectly solid and so dainty I could
topple them with a nudge at that joint, that one. We each
run under it quick for a photo before golden hour peaks.
Evan finally joins us—the mood has passed, he wants
to tuck back under the arch. He says it’s really something
as swifts return to their nest in its eaves with true bugs.