I.

History is in the music that fills the streets of Athens

in the 1-2-3 kicks to the beat

It's in flaky bites of warm pastry 

And sips of coffee that coat your tongue

The ground you step on has been stepped on before.

Every building you enter was built on the ruins of another structure deemed less important than smoothies. 

The ground is worn smooth from the scuffing of sandals

Smooth all the way down

All the way back
Stone floors destroyed long ago still burn under the sun

Future floors burn already

Shining under the same star. 

II.

The Colosseum glows under the sun

It is bustling life where there was battle and death

Bones in the walls watch feet shuffle and shutters click

The history they have watched unfold is overwhelming

There are names of gladiators only they remember

Names pronounced with an ancient tongue

Tourists wander through a graveyard

Not aware they are being watched

There is so much watching

Old, tired, eyes see everything that happens here

History watches them

There are few places that are not full of eyes

III.

Courtyards in Salerno are full of sunlight in the afternoon

Full of birds’ cries in the early morning

Full of church bells ringing on the hour

Every hour

The church bells sound different there

They sound emptier

Like a triangle

Or like a piece of tin being struck with a stick

It sounds like the same bells have been ringing every hour for hundreds of years

It sounds like bells worn thin over time

Maybe it’s a very old bell

Maybe that’s just how the bell sounds

Who knows?

The world is old

Many bells have been worn thin and replaced

Trees cut down and replanted

Tables and chairs broken and repaired

Shops opened and closed

Restaurants gone in and out of business

Books written and burned

Books adapted to black and white movies and then into color and then into a musical

Cause why not?

There is too much to teach 

Some of it is not worth teaching

IV.

There is history at home too

The eyes follow

Peeping out from behind billboards 

History learns

It watches 

Sometimes it smiles

There is history no one knows 

Even the eyes don’t know what came before them

V.

People wander the streets of Amalfi

Perhaps they wonder what was there 

Only some will find out 

And even then

They can only go back so far

They do not teach about the beaches

Where the rocks have been worn smooth 

They do not teach about the crashing of the waves

Or all of the feet that have been burned by sand

These things have history too

But other things are more important

Death is more interesting than beaches

VI.

Pompeii is empty screams of abandoned buildings

long dried tears of terror

The fear of children embedded in the ground

Mothers watch the world turn their lives into paper mâché

Watch the world fill children-shaped holes in the ground

They’re laid in glass cases

So strangers can flock to their bodies

So strangers can rush to capture the dignity their deaths left behind

They hear the voices of peppy tour guides.

They scorn the sympathies of strangers for the lives of their sons that ended too soon

People don’t mean to disrespect Pompeii 

But even with the intention to travel and not tour

It is hard to experience a culture that is dead.

The absence of people makes room for camera flashes and bucket hats 

winding through the decrepit streets.

Just because there are no dates on the stones

doesn’t mean this is not a graveyard.