A swirling stream of captured glimpses,
memories highlighted with stone and shadow, wildflower mosaics burying segmented
columns and headless statues.

Whole universes of civilizations having risen,
thrived, deepened, and fallen. Fading, fading.
Long before my footsteps dared to touch,
long before my mind sought to understand.

If I stare long enough, deep enough,
into this chiseled rock, crafted by hands
long since withered, decayed. Looking past
the modernity that surrounds these ruins,
beyond the busy chatter, traffic noise,
airplanes that sever the sky…
if I keep staring, might i see?
Might I glimpse, for a moment,
the true gravity of history?

And if it visits me only in quick
fiery specks of realization,
flashes of enlightenment my mind can barely hold,
but returning again, and again, as long as
I continue to stare, continue to freeze time
in the continual disintegration of stone to sand.
Can I put that gravity into my blood?
Move it through the course that feeds my body,
until it settles in the density of my own bones,
into the ruins I will leave behind one day.