After “Philippi,” a photograph by Lee Abbamonte
Near this once-thriving Roman outpost, civil war
hurled the legions of Cassius and Brutus against
the army of Antony and Octavian, decades before
Paul established a church here and wrote his epistles.
More corrosive than war, erosion and time wore
down the city. Scavengers collected its loose brick
to patch nearby towns, leaving a few cobblestone lanes
intact among crumbling walls and roofless pillars.
Any heroic statue that once stood in this frame
has gone, gods and generals unhorsed, shattered,
forgotten. The tallest columns rise above trees
rooted in the life-giving rot of countless ancestors.
A few pillars seem to wobble—an illusion.
Beyond the ruins, a muddy river, partly concealed
by the spread fingers of leafy woods, guards
the near bank. A watercolor mist of forest
blurs the opposite shore. The entire scene tracks
from side to side as if straight lines of human
design had teased Nature into drawing a comb
through its variegated hair. Perhaps this isn’t really
a photograph, but a dream that cannot explain itself,
except to moan that all monuments are destined
to come down eventually, toppled by gravity,
justice, or someone’s enlightened grandchildren.
first appeared in The Main Street Rag
Richard Allen Taylor, Poet 