It was not the journey
a wise person would have planned
with toddlers in tow, wakened
by the stuttering motion of a car
stuck in traffic,
jammed in their seats while the world
hemmed us in behind and before,
each shining roof the baked tile
shell of a sprawling tortoise lumbering
slowly through the green grass of England.

Far from the silken trade routes
of the motorway, lacing our way through
chocolate-box villages, suddenly we saw,
standing as they had for how many thousand years?
– the weathered obelisks, quarried from Wales,
hauled across the heathen wilderness,
set in a circle to mystify, to mesmerize,
watching our puny progress
with stony amusement and
an almost prophetic stillness.

Image by Erwin Bosman, CC0 (Public Domain Dedication), via Wikimedia Commons