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Iberian Cross-Roads
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 only ourselves.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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