Time and the river flowing,
A river flowing free,
From snowy Rocky Mountains
To balmy tropic sea.

El Rio Colorado,
A river running free,
It carved a mighty canyon,
For all the world to see.

The Kaibab Plateau rising,
The river keeping pace,
The tidal delta growing,
An isostatic race.

And so across the Plateau,
So downward cut the stream,
Its riffles and its rapids,
Down-cut a mighty seam.

Each surge of the raging river,
Laid bare a rocky page,
Layer after layer eroding,
Each of an older age.

Time and the river flowing,
A river flowing free,
The book of time was opened,
To reveal Earth’s history.

Time and the river flowing,
Now concrete spillway drops,
Hold back the annual spring floods,
And irrigate the crops.

Vulcan tried damming the Canyon,
What a conflict of water and fire!
Though his lavas dammed the river,
They fell by Neptune’s ire.

Five million years of Earth time,
Or three score years and ten?
How mighty is the Canyon,
How puny the works of men!

Time and the river flowing,
A river flowing free,
Past the ruins of former dam-sites,
After man has ceased to be.

Wilfred A. Elders
Riverside, CA, USA
August 2003