Dear Earth,

At Bryce Canyon,
you built a cathedral out of time.
Stone by stone,
you taught the wind to sculpt
and the light to linger.

The hoodoos stand like quiet witnesses,
painted in sunset,
each one a fossilized moment
of your slow, deliberate dreaming.

I stood at the rim,
small and astonished,
grateful to belong
to a planet that makes beauty
even from erosion.

With love,
—Cat Atom