Scorched earth

By Adam Gibson ©

up through madrid and beyond
and i'd guess there hasn't been
a drop of rain for twenty years
but i could be wrong
yet you'd concur if you saw these fields
of arid rocks and everything
scrubby and khaki and
for four hours i haven't seen a soul
for hundreds of bone dry kilometres.
they invented the term "rolling fields"
for this country but they omitted the lushness
inherent in the construction of the meaning
in this case,
stunted trees,
each grain of dirt desecrated
by all the footsteps of the invaders
from the moors to the romans
to the celts, to the australians and the eceteras,
and so my history goes astray,
from hill to peak,
from church to fort,
toeprints crumbling rock into ridges and
gullies damned into throat-parched valleys
hinting at me through tinted glass that
all history has had it,
all the past is finished,
show's over as the hillside to the right
lies quietly scorched by a fire burning now
but one that which will
never ever be recorded
in history