Crossroads

We drive breakneck over hot roads. Churches, big as cathedrals, rocket from pocket villages. Castillo's cast their campanile on the baking earth. The Great Mosque of Cordoba, the green Alhambra shades us through a preaching dust. The Giralda; its Christianized minaret stretched like a tourists neck, and above the Papal parapets, a banished Allah. The holy places have hollow guts, their tubes are wrapped around a torso, like alien spaceships. One edifice dwarfs another until awe sinks to its knees attired in the black mufti of old peasant women. We are traveling fast now. Nave and transept are our crossroads. Basilica and sacellum our roadside naps. The car parallel parks itself beside every altar and shrine, it's engine running as we chase God's works down, ticking off not only Him but ourselves.