Sensing a strength forged long ago, and now much needed.

Forum of antiquity
unflinchingly bearing
your ruination
in the heat and dust of
rapine excavation.
Wanton to a million shuffling sandals,
kicking, slipping, tripping,
over your exposed recumbence.
They take you, quite unheeding,
snapping at your attributes,
never pausing or inquiring.
For beyond the palatable,
sprawl the spawn of an older
Civilization, cast heedlessly
upon the wayside

Olympians to their last, and
gnarled as olive trees these
black-robed precursors of
the future stand,
slightly bending.
Worthy ancestors to
populations present,
protected by custom,
preserved by veneration,
parenting by pain those
long-dropped generations.

Fertility lies fecund in
the unturned folds of
red-earthed fields,
stretching themselves indolently,
from sea to mountain,
their harvest
willingly wishing to be
coaxed and stroked
into the yielding.

Nurtured of our ploughing,
our sowing, our tending
the beauty of this bounty lies
ready to be reaped.
Flesh-ripe sustenance, compliant
in the plucking,
becomes our swollen future
of hope and inspiration.
This produce of the present,
the juice of unforbidden fruit,
lies sweetly on
the lips.