The Great Trade Routes

It is a rather remarkable tale

yet there’s no reason

to believe he wasn’t

wholly truthful revealing

of myself or you

for that matter

a massive sandstone building

there once built

for the collection of taxes

the crossing of great trade routes

built on an equally great plain

of sand and grass

grown at times over

with low pine forests

because grains shift under

and between their roots

swamps

with roaming thunderstorms

or the fast sister’s wind

whipped

grassland fires

of expansive devastation

rebirth rekindled

by their most generous heat

in the blackened soil

left in their trails and in my mind

I see this as clearly as it was

really somewhere

and it is.