Sacrifice (A visit to a Mayan ruin in Belize)

I climbed the steep grey steps in the heat of the day
Not thinking of what I would see at the top.

Below I had seen the baths and the market --
Hints of life and humanity from long ago.

The table is
Nothing --
Just fitted rocks,
Held together by the silt and clay of the beautiful green rainforest surrounding it.
It sits on the top of the tallest mounded pyramid, with silent stone faces larger than a man on the way up.
It is about four feet in diameter.
Not long enough for an entire body --
Just a bit too short.
It is round.
A strange shape amidst the jagged pyramids and pointed arches.
It must have held, as best it could, many a sacrifice.
Humans.
Hearts beating.
And then not.

I touched it.
It spoke it‘s stone words.
Soaked in the blood of the martyrs,
It seemed to bask in the sun today like all the others.

And I pulled my hand back.

No one else wanted to touch the thing
But part of me wanted to lie down on the stone as best I might fit and see what happened.
Part of me knew I was the priest to perform the sacrifice also.

There was agony
That ages of sun and rain could not deny.
There was the strangely shaped human ability to destroy life
With the hope of something good or holy or right to come of it.
The stones.