"Spain"

Andulusian nights
Dusty days
Magical evenings 

Spectacular mornings
Lutes playing soft refrains
El Cid 's poema epico

Chanted in courtyards

Of stone 

Ancient days of a Reconquista
Hidalgos lounge

Wearing silk shirts
Slow decay of an empire's grandees 

Hemingway's passionate freedoms

Guernicia's innocent
Royalist

Republican

Socialist

Communist

Labels falling like bombs

Bull fights in Roman arenas
Stallions running across marshland

Sanguine wine liquid rubys on linen table cloth

Franco's tenure of corporate oppression

Lorca entombed

Mass grave unknown
Passions fade

With tourists scorn

Flamenco of a nations heart
Deaths companions still saunter country lanes
Clinging roses climb hidden grinning skulls 

Arabic memories captured

In stone braile of history

Castile's keeps crumble

Under noon day sun

Anejo topped Pyrenees

Cool breath for hot dusty plain
Roncevaux's knightly dead

Still guard its portals  

Basque people cling to

Hopes ancient before

Roman Legions 

Gypsy minstrels promenade

Through Barcelona nights

12 String guitars echoing history 

My home of stone walls

Orange tree courtyards

Dusky hued women
Where empires were born

Sundered and died

Conquistador's children

Rub elbows with Jewish philosophy
Eating pastries prepared by saintly nuns

I ponder thoughts of poetry

Did Abraham ibn Ezra's cloak cover my Spanish Sky?

-Fin-

DS Baker