Railroad

Roman Road

Boulders litter the landscape as if scattered by careless gods, Jupiter hurling his thunderbolt and cracking the dry earth, splitting peaks that spit up whole orchards, roots pointing to heaven and dying under Apollo’s summer gaze under which this plain of building blocks emerged vast as visions of chariot wheels racing from Antioch to Mesopotamia, drafted peasants hefting picks, prying plans from rock and dirt cut and dug into a line meant to extend the desert Empire dissolved more than a millennium ago before now when one young girl peers from a scarf, her small hand offering a pale rose. Retracing her steps on the uneven wet path, she heads back to a home nudging the road ending in cultivation and stray stones.