It’s fitting to see them along the side of the road, the silent sentinels who watch the occasional car passing by. More often than not, they are a witness to the cows and sheep in the meadow beyond, but now and then, someone will come down the long road and actually notice them. Some go up the hill and some come down. The direction traveled is not important because we are all on that road, and each of us will go up the hill and then come down. Every time.
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| The silent sentinels. |
It’s a long way to travel to get from here to there and
back again, but the silent sentinels are patient and they can wait for us. After all, there is so much to do and we are
always so busy. We pass them by all the
time. All the time . . . as the clock
goes tic toc, tic toc. We’ve got to keep
going down that road, even if we’ve forgotten in which direction we’re
traveling.
Little American flags line the fence to let us know that
American heroes are here. They traveled
the road, too. Not surprisingly, this
road transcends history, and a couple of hundred years are nothing to the road
or the soldiers who camp beside it. What
is history but a march on a long road through a fabricated timeline? All roads still lead to Rome, and somewhere a
bugle is calling.
I can’t remember if it’s at the top of the hill or at the
bottom where the road ends because I forgot where I began my trek. But I keep searching for it, just like
everyone else, even if we all pretend that we’re not interested in the
least. I keep looking for markers, and
every now and then I find a silent sentinel who points the way. Some days I see more sentinels and some days
less. But they’re always there on the
side of the road, if you care to look.
They are markers through that timeline, little notches on a great old stone
that spins along its own road.
