I flew from Cairo south the the airport near the famous Temple of the Dawn, Abu Simbel. I flew because it was the only way to reach this out-of-the-way temple, but I couldn't stand being tended like a sheep in a flock of tourists by the bored guide. "On your left you will notice the cartouche of Queen Necrophilia...." I blanked her out, but I still wasn't getting the feeling of the place despite its antiquity. Though dwarfed by the awesome proportions of the hewn stone statues, I was left numb.

So when the tour group was herded back into the bus, I told the guide to go on without me. "But it's five miles across burning desert to the airport," he warned me. He didn't mention the tourists who had been attacked by Moslem extremists. I was stubborn; I would find a way to the airport I assured him. The guide threw up his hands and left in disgust.

Finally I was alone to absorb the antiquity and the majesty there, alone except for some gawking Arabs in flowing galabia gowns who sat beneath the only shade tree in sight. The doors leading to the temple interior were closed and locked after the tour left, so I roamed outside among the ancient carved stone. Four colossal figures of the might pharaoh, Ramses II sat in a row flanking both sides of the entrance of the sacred chamber.

Alone I began to absorb the history of the temple. What an amazing feat of astronomy and engineering it is! I could picture the pomp and pageantry of the ceremony held at dawn on the longest day of each year so many millennia ago, when the first ray of the rising sun stabbed like a sword into the center of a sanctified rock deep in the cavern carved out of a limestone mountain.

I also began to feel the heat of midday sun pounding down on the back of my neck; time to take refuge in the shade. While I waited there I decided to pass the time by writing a letter to my wife. "Dear Mars, I am sitting here in the shade..."

I stopped at this point and looked around. There was something missing. I rose and walked a short distance to another shade, sat down, and continued my letter: "...in the shade of the fallen head of Ramses II. A few moments ago I was sitting in the first shade I came across, but by moving only a few steps my words and my reality suddenly have taken on a larger significance. Here in the shelter of the Great Ramses fallen head I have become one with the long history of the temple. I connect with a symbol of the pharaoh's pride, a symbol of his divine and absolute power. I also see it all now crumbling into ruin, humbled, the mighty power worn down into sand by the battering storms of time.

"How easily life passes and, therefore what a great and precious treasure is this moment. It occurs to me, it dawns on me here at the Temple of the Dawn, that the journey of a few steps was a profound one from the ordinary to a moment infused with poignancy, a moment charged with metaphor of a universal principal. I had consciously walked toward the poetic; I was romancing my life. Could I do this more often? Could I fill every moment of my life with such poetry?

This story is included in the book titled Cosmic Elephants and Other True Stories

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