PoetryAloud

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Robert King Reads

On History

When I lived in the Dakotas,
towns were celebrating only

their centennial. Outside
a hotel window in Spain

stood a deserted church,
restorada in 1855,

a tree growing out of the belfry.
I have learned about time, learned again.

When I asked a young girl on her way
through the Zuni village what that was,

those rocks jumbled around a hole
in a weedy vacant lot, she said

“The center of the world,” and ambled
through that morning toward her school.

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