Empire
By Kate Middleton
Published 1 January 2021
Five winters
stone has kept my fingers
agile
Reaching into coat’s
warm pocket
hand navigates ancient Plovdiv
in a piece
of gravel—weather’s shrapnel—
as my old
coat’s wool weaves heat
into my skin
All this
stone’s patient indifference
observes in
press
of passing seasons
All this discarded time
reflected
in petroglyph’s striation
as now
the oil of human
hands laid on
as now their second
hand
fever warms
a fragment of lost Thrace
lost empire