AS SPIRITUAL AS I GET

Time change
Athens to Rome
Is it one hour, or two?
Ten thousand hours
Or rocket time
How many minutes to wisdom
Eons to Mount Olympus
Seconds of knowing.

Dry olives, thirsty cypress
Hard rock staging cuts into the hillside
Steep incline steps
White dirt dust howls at the Parthenon
Twenty five hundred years of time
And grit is still grit
Parched throats are nothing new.

Wind of the ancients blows today
Acropolis sand, carved from the rock
Gift of the gods
Limestone harvest, marble dust
Wind
Sand
Time
An immortal Greek chorus
Choked with fossil specks of ancient seas
Hair tangled with abrasive sand
Tiny follicle columns eroding
Goddess-sized pillars alike
Losing definition
Fading beauty
(Too much time is not good for stone statues or shiny hair.
Even the gods understand that.)

And flat sandal feet
Slapping the goddess ground
Slap slap leather feet
Finding purchase on the slippery rock
So worn, so weary
This sandstone perch
Higher than the city
Lower than Olympus
Cast in crippled revery.

Temple Athena
Where time is uncertain
Holding secrets of the ages
How many hours till one grows wise?
Is it an hour, or two?
Confused time
Airport time
Bewildered rock
Timeless hill
Forgotten goddess blowing away
Sad beauty
In a minute or two, featureless
Time change, and gone.