I’m dreaming of the Mediterranean,
something sweet in my mouth, Egyptian
honey and a dusty walk to pyramids
five millennia old. I touched
their building blocks of rock, the pyramids
a constant presence so close to Cairo,
and later up the Nile, we moved from pyramid
to temple at Luxor. We traced hieroglyphics
on columns: lotus and papyrus.
In Greece, we walked where oracles once spoke
and saw temple columns scattered by time.
We drank from Athena’s holy shrine,
shaded by olive trees. And in Rome,
under a clear blue sky, tucked in a corner
of the Forum, fresh cut roses honored Caesar.
In England, Stonehenge drew us north of London,
around that circle of stones, once the center
for a people older than the druids,
the path worn smooth.
Something in the sky resonates still
as it does in the great valley of Mexico
at Teotihuacan, between the temple of the sun
and the temple of the moon, where sun-faded
murals record forgotten battles; further south,
iguanas scatter across empty courtyards at Copan,
and howler monkeys shriek in the heat of the day.
Tonight I’m dreaming of a future world.
How we have fought and loved and left behind
so few talismans. The future: What can it bring
but the same dreadful mix of beauty and horror?
I can yet hope for a world without war.
Our planet has a future, but humans? I’m less sure.
A lovely evocative poem with internal rhymes and vividly pictorial. I like the way you have used the travel to ancient places to give hints of the future. And the final words bring it home with a wallop!
ReplyDeleteas you so gracefully pointed out,, civilizations have come and gone.. and so too will we.. the next ones will be fortified with the ability to live on the earth such as it as,, much as were we...
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