Sealed Doorways

Chiseled in the darkness of stone,
Lie the buried, unfathomable fire,
The sounds of the pounding sea,
The evolution of hands to possess, shape, subjugate.

His Breath, His Word—Ihíio, Itlátol—
Aztec salutations,
The obeisance now silenced.
This man with his offering
Lost in the rivers of sand.

Yet still in defiance,
Claims of the living.
In graffiti, the unnamed,
The whisperings of rapture and agony,
Dreams deferred,
Mirrors of the past—
Sealed doorways,
Lives lost,
Their thresholds stripped bare.