History tells us
of a rock
on the edge of a parking lot
in Irvine, California,
that decided it wanted to be
an independent nation.

It made up an anthem
and an economy. It drew a flag
on its downside
with the help of mercenary
sowbugs.

“Glory, glory,”
it sang to itself
when the sprinklers came on
at four in the morning
as the office blocks slept.

The Country of the Stone
was neutral in most
international disputes
but loathed its neighbors
and defended its borders
through a clandestine policy
of leaching dangerous minerals
into the adjacent soil.

With a population of one
it had little internal conflict.
It parsed its rich history
to obscure anything beyond
the Ice Age and the volcano
that spawned it.
Unfortunate incidents
like the Cracking
of the Bike Messenger’s Skull
were hushed up.

Dark in the damp morning,
gray in the sun of high noon,
indistinct in the glow of the streetlights,
concealed by the shade of the gingkos,
national pride swelling within —
this was a proud place
and the rumbling of bulldozers
coming to expand the parking lot
was as nothing to the rock, all the way
up to the moment when the steel
struck sparks from it as it raised it
high in the air toward the dump truck
which carried it away without a second thought.