Well Of The Ancient City

There is a common well 

In every ancient city 

Known in all tongues

By a shared root of meaning,

By a shared route of traveling,

The same route traveled and understood

For centuries

By rootless nomads and inhabitants  

To this ancient square. 

Coming to gather and drink of

This cognate water,

This cognate blood

Of all mankind, 

Drunk by many tongues

In this city of the ages.

At the heart of the city,

This well drawn from for thousands of years

In the middle of rotaries and sun-baked edifices

By women inside my vision

Blasted by truculence of sunlight

In the asperity of dust and desert,

Dressed in robes and sandals 

With long black hair in scarves

Inside an aureole of blistering sand and powder

Who know that without the well 

There is no city.

Within its protective walls

The well  known across the world by the same shared root

The city known across the world by the same shared route.

It is the one well of all wells in the one city of all  cities

As the millennia conflate into stern vision

Of the preciousness of water
And the hard work to journey to and claim it amidst dry land.