History’s Cobblestone Braille

Keeper of shadows,

your script etched in stone,

you harvest echoes from the earth’s molten sighs,

obsidian hardened into memory,

glass once mirrored the climb of creatures

whose paws and hands pressed against your ribs,

whose breath fogged your surface

as burlap-wrapped feet fled blade and spear,

slipping on water spilled from balconies above,

predators forever circling,

forever hungry,

forever written into your silence.

***

Now in the afternoon of my years,

I walk among your cadences,

your wrinkles the fingerprints of masons

who baked sunlight into permanence.

***

Each groove a canyon,

each fissure a riverbed of seed and drift,

spirits rising like grass in wind,

reminding me that calendars crumble

but stone remains young,

a language beyond vowels,

a whisper beneath sneakers,

a murmur beneath boots,

a pulse beneath sandals,

tongues of the old world still speaking

through the soles of the living.

***

Counterfeit pavements multiply,

plastic imitations polished for blind eyes,

serpents of ignorance slithering in Gucci laces,

dancing upon your children sold into bondage,

their steps unaware of Carthaginian oars,

Mediterranean ports,

the salt-stained hands that once rowed history forward.

***

And so,

Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive gleams with false cobblestones,

a masquerade of plazas,

a prison of commerce disguised as heritage.

***

Your voice fades,

your hidden messages dim,

but for those who listen,

your silence is symphonic,

your stillness orchestral,

your touch a braille for the soul.

***

I pace onward,

from asphalt veins of cities

to gravel arteries of country roads,

from highways humming like steel rivers

to mountain paths jagged with memory.

***

My feet descend stone to stone,

each step a syllable,

each rock a word,

until the path loosens into sand,

the shore opening its palm to tomorrow.

***

Here the end becomes a beginning,

the sea writing new verses in foam,

and the steppingstones of tomorrow wait beneath the tide.