Distant rock fading

Early autumn, a slurry of cirrus overhead.
This season never lasts long here.
A few days or so of color and then the leaves begin to
fall, beaten back by thick breezes and high-desert storms.
But during those few days of color
Timpanogos
is patched about like a rainbow,
with absinthe greens,
cinnamon browns and the color of beets,
and an overwhelming rusted-orange that
flows across most of the mountain
like a tidal wave of ferrous sand.
Along it slopes quartzite,
limestone and fragments of old ocean beds
all crusted over with lichen--
somehow living
without soil, clinging
to a rock;
the lichen is the same rust-orange color of the leaves.

From the roadway Timpanogos is just another
one of those sedimentary rocks,
covered with lichen;
and the further we trespassers
remove ourselves into our homes,
the further the view recedes,
the more distant, more faded becomes
that kingly overseer of our naive little valley.