Empire

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