Our roots dip
Under the olive tree
Where mother and father
Gathered.
It was there: time
And looking back.
It is foreign
and reminds me
Of nothing
I’ve seen before
In books and movies
Or the abridged
version of a life
Well-told by a friend
With experience.

It seems even further,
Before our eyes had color
And weight was a figment
Of some late epoch,
One with stone on a
Grand scale,
The type that only
Grunts could do justice to.

We moved back and forth
Across time,
Imagining one another
Looking out to sea
Or from a cliff
To the furthest pillar of smoke.