The Lingering Braille of Cobblestone
by Odin Roark

Cobblestone history,
ethereal keeper of cosmic moments,
Nature’s fragments reaped from high seas,
vast is your harvest of earth’s rumblings,
often of molten tears
made hard into charred obsidian,
reflecting primates whose paws a running
become one with their heavily trodden past.

How ghostlike
the calloused drippings of peril,
footsteps swathed in burlap
having dodged blade, spear
and wash water dumped from high,
witnessing slippery footing
of predators ever lustful,
ever hungry,
ever historic.

Imagination clings tightly
among your strategically arranged tapestry,
amidst fast-lane fabrications lining your path,
forsaking wrinkled skin of ancient masons
once creating sunbaked evolution,
now but a past of pasts.

To look close at remnants
is to see hidden in their micro-canyons
longevity’s irrigated seed and drift,
carrying spirits aloft from tenacious grasses high,
reminding us that while calendars may crumble,
your stone of old lives on,
transcending the language of scholar and child,
acknowledging whispered touches beneath today’s Nike treads,
arresting the tongues of ancient cultures,
echoing murmurs of felled voyagers,
cries of stalwart warriors,
rivers of passion red,
and consummate polishings
of yesterday’s remembered cenotaph.

Yet…

Surrounding you lurks Nature's fakery,
ever-made-ready counterfeit copies,
pavement for the drive-by mind,
the serpentine monster of consumerism
existing without preference,
whose Gucci laced feet
prance upon reality’s designer-offspring
a make-shift attempt at perpetuating history,
replacing treasures now but construction’s rock pile bondage,
quickly becoming Carthaginian and Mediterranean ancestral dust.

For…

As the ball and chain of today’s materially imprisoned
strut unconsciously about Rodeo Drive’s faux cobblestone plazas,
the artistry of your craft and patient originality
is reaching a fade out.
Yet, for the few who seek your hidden echoes of cacophonous history,
there remains an orchestral dance,
a ballet of movement for those who can be touched to see beyond any loss.

Such is the lingering braille of cobblestone.