A Hidden City

My boots had eaten up over 25 miles
hiking for four days along the 500-year-old Inca Trail,
through Andean peaks wrapped in pelts of coarse grass,
and forest where plants on branches sucked moisture from misty air
brought us to a pair of built stone pillars, standing to attention -
the mighty Sun Gate, Intipunku.

Gazing down from the top of foot-worn, steep, stone steps
at the breath-taking, heart-lifting site of Machu Picchu,
draped saddle-like over the summit of its own hill
in all its magnetism, majesty and mystery,
just as I recalled from photos,
smiling invitingly up at us.

Mountain peaks clothed in clouds,
protectively surrounded this abandoned city,
its secret kept for 600 years, till unveiled a hundred years ago
from its disguising cloak of vegetation.
We grasped our journey's objective -
the fabled Lost City of the Incas.

Our party, from many nations, descended the stone steps
to the central, sheltered lawn where
a few grazing llamas ignored both tourists in flip flops,
who bussed up the zig zag, hair-pin bendy road,
and us twelve, booted, intrepid trekkers, who came the 'proper way,'
now glorying in our achievement.

Wandering alone among roofless houses
with walls whose smooth stones locked intricately together
without mortar and no space even for a knife blade,
I wondered at the Inca's skill and art, wrought without iron tools.
Below, terraces for crops, including coca we used in tea
cascaded down the mountainside step after steep step,

Atop Machu Picchu's hill I found the Temple of the Sun,
dedicated to Viracocha, the Sun God, their divine ancestor.
with its Intihuatana Stone, "Hitching Post of the Sun,"
which tethered the fiery globe in its annual journey across the sky.
Beyond the buildings, temple and grassed area
the mountain dropped away into the river valley a thousand metres below.

My intention, though, was to climb Huayna Picchu,
standing like a sentinel guarding the ancient city.
Only two of us, the oldest, made the precipitous ascent,
conquering the forbidding 360 metre peak like leopards.
Gazing down on the marvelous city, I honoured the civilization that built it.
My eyes turned back to the Sun Gate and the adventurous way we had come.

March 2021