Layering viral time across Armageddon

Photo montage / digital art / with poem

Tel Meggido, an ancient ruin where Armageddon begins—
under the depths of lime an old crayfish and the shadow
of a fish, unseen, await history to come while the memories
of glossy ibis, prehistoric creature of flight, flit fleetingly
across the stones. The keystone latched into the arch
unlocks invisible texts on dreams and nightmares
unleashed here and there. Not far from away, Syria
and Lebanon corner northern Israel while the stone waits.

Faded recollection and a studied distance
washed blue ignite our indifference as we
wait on sands below a sea of sound bites
for the media-moment master to signal
the importance of the current disaster.
Tel Meggido has weathered, piled up
its rubble above its secret origins, and
reveled in the diffuse spotlight of legend.
It cares little for any particular human squabble,
recollecting the cumulative whole into
a squalid canker turned tumor amid wildflowers.

Water-color sensibility soaks my eyes
as my hand shades them from the sun.
How could this hot beauty, these flowering fields,
remember past battles so solidly as to project
them into our future destruction? What stories
will these rocks unfold? With their own structure
too recent to know themselves the roots
of things: the crayfish, the fish shadow,
the ibis flying past just before the last day dawns.

——————

Perhaps one day, this art and poem will go viral. If you want me, NYT Blog, I’m here.