Intersecting the Parallel

   by Phillip Peters

An old man walks up a rocky road
littered with lichen.  Silver-green
Ent beards torn from their homes
in the storm of an oily night.
He reaches his mailbox
no mail, just the morning paper
tucked into its white cylinder.
A line vibrates here, runs east
over the Grand Canyon, tourists
taking pictures, cuts through the panhandle, 
dust blows through Broken Arrow on to
Fayetteville. It crosses the Mississippi
into Tennessee, barges carry grain downriver
It runs past Knoxville, across the Tennessee river, 
two boys fishing on the bank,
over the Smokey mountains,
past Chapel Hill and Raleigh,
Kitty Hawk, the sound of motors in the sky
faint, on its way over the Atlantic.
Comes to land at the end of the ancient world,
the Pillars of Hercules where 
a man, savors a glass of Tempranillo wine
at Punta de Tarifa, watches clouds coat Gibraltar 
with rain and the sun paint a rainbow 
sheen on its monolithic limestone.
The line moves across the Mediterranean 
echoes of the Colossus crumbling
into the Aegean or on the hills of Rhodes
vibrate the line, and comes ashore in Syria,
travels to the cradle of civilization 
and eight thousand miles away
on an Iraqi road an IED bursts at dawn
twists a Hum-Vee into scrap for 
a Calder balancing act,
shatters soldier’s bodies, lives.
It makes the news two days later.
The line doesn’t stop, keeps on running
across Asia weaving along the Silk Road 
on its way to China, past Japan’s holy three, 
magma rumbling deep within their hearts,
across the Pacific to the land of plenty,
over the Sierras to the base of Hoover Dam,
and down a road to an old man 
reading his morning paper.  
Nothing good vibrates here just 
bitter thoughts boiling. He reads 
an article on page two about the war,
how he has been wounded, by an enemy
on the other side of the world,
how the 36th parallel begins and ends nowhere
but can intersect anyone, anywhere.