Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is situated in a strange and hostile landscape. This place, Rozel Point on the northern tip of lake Utah oppressed me into intense emotions. Never had I been to such a alien landscape, yet never had I been anywhere so exquisitely beautiful. Lake Utah was an old inland. The saline only supporting a weird bacterial life which makes the water an eery pink on a silver shore with a black basalt shore line. Walking along the crisp salt crystal encrusted beach the terrain is littered with corpses of insects and bird that had been drawn into the landscape, then trapped, murdered by the heat, the lake of water. Drawn in by the beauty and left to die on the shore. I found some intensely beautiful corpses.

I wrote a poem whilst I was there...

She cried a thousand years or more,

Cried out her demons and fears,

And the sun beat down upon the shore,

Upon her salty tears.

For a time her sea was still,

Upon her salty shore,

And the violent sea, a deep blush red,

Abayed to the deep sea floor.

Upon the winds,

Upon the clouds,

She called to life around,

"Come to me , stay with me,

Make love upon my ground."

On the winds and on the clouds,

They came from miles around,

And struck by the beauty of the silver shore,

Made love upon her ground.

The violent sea abayed no more,

And the clouds swirled all around,

The coupling life was murdered,

Dead upon the ground.

She cried a thousand years or more,

For the death upon her shore,

As the sea a deep blush red,

Did batter her once more.