Time in Florissant

By Steven Wade Veatch

The valley is the way it should be,
formed over an endless flow of time.
Volcanoes erupted:
        Mudflows 
                  rushed  
                                  downhill
mixing rocks, boulders, and soil—knocking down trees, 
tossing them like twigs, snapping them apart, 
and burying them. Time turned trees into stone. 
From this destruction a lake formed.
Water skippers danced on its surface, 
caddis flies landed on nearby willows,
and fish lurked in its depths.

Consider the fossil insects and plants trapped 
in layers of time; and a sleeping mammoth
at rest on a layer of lost pollen, covered 
with Ice Age gravels. 

A few pine trees, marked by the Ute people, 
show this was once their home.

An old homestead sits by Grape Creek, 
its timbers whisper the past of struggling settlers.

This land, where life has stretched 
across time, from past to present, 
magnifies how short time is for me, 
and just when I learn how to live, 

it’s over. 

Petrified redwood “Trio” at the Florissant Fossil Beds. Original artwork by Charles Frizzell.