The Cliff Dwellers

BY CAROLE NICHOLS


They stand as silent sentinels;
Holes in the cliff watching the world.
Ghostly silence and filtered dust,
A mystery round the desert curled.


Home to a race long gone into night,
Swept away on the winds;
The lone eagle circles, pitious cries,
Where have you gone, my friends?


The doors stare out at sun-baked earth,
Watching the world of a people, history gone
Stories locked in long abandoned dust,
Only ghosts walk there, all alone.


If you stand there in the setting sun,
The doors in the stone seem to come alive;
Shadows move and the wind sighs a song
That the eagle echos with each lonely dive.


All that's left are holes in the cliff
And the coyote howls as it calls to a race,
Vanished to nowhere and leaving no clues,
Disappeared from this earth without a trace.