Marsha Mathews
Humanities Division
Halfway
up the
old rock surrounds me.
Below, pepper-green land yawns
relaxed yet aware.
Shadows hang like hammocks,
mossy green, inviting.
Winding up and over stone walls
bougainvilleas splash violet.
Ruins
rise in clusters across the
skeletons of another era: elegant, tomb-gray.
I wonder if like the one I climb, they are
sculpted, etched, strangely lettered.
If such a frieze as this one wraps wall to wall.
If up and down limestone columns, carved Mayans
beat drums, harvest maize and henequen.
My hand flat against cold rock, I stretch to touch them.
My flesh merging stone, I drop 2,000 years.
Am there! A Mayan. Working
hour into heat-heaving hour.
We climb, hundreds of us, sweating.
Single file, we move the earth.
Block by block. Against our foreheads.
Bricks enough to build whole pyramids
with steps enough
to out-step time.