There he stood under the ragged rim
Of the crumbling red stone cliffs
Hidden in the slag of the blackened
And fractured once molten volcanic rifts.

Created by upheavals in the fragile crust of this
Restless and shifting land
It was once unspoiled, unblemished
By the touch of human hand.

Murals etched on stone canvas
Stories so simply told
There a hunter and the hunted
Riding across plains of rose and gold.

But he has stood under the shadowed rim
For at least four hundred years
With a helmet on his spectre's head
In his clawed hand a rusty spear.

Forgotten by the men who left him there
Until I stumbled upon his bones
In the lonely grotto, sacred canyon
Where the Conquistador stands alone.

Hallowed eyed with a ghastly wide
And an ivory gapped toothed grin
His scream filled the air and raised my hair
With that voice of a Harlequin.

It was only chance that brought me here
To this timeless haunted place
That will be lost again to the whispering winds
That the sands of time will erase.

I spoke to that silent rack of bones
Who had searched for the fabled gold
Who stands forever Guardian
And whose story has never been told.

He came with a ship from across the sea
In service to a Spanish King
He marches with the others from the western coast
Into the deserts of early spring.

Horses carried those metal clad men
And wagons rattled and creaked
The haughty Dons and the Black robed priest
Searched a land that was empty and bleak.

They conquered the people's souls for the church
Merciless in their quest
Leaving their mark on the people and land
As they marched across the West.

But standing there under the ragged rim
Of that crumbling sandstone wall
The lonely remains of Conquistador
Shone proudly white and tall.

Still guarding the wagons,armor and store
Of the men long since dead
Who followed the trail to the far saw toothed hills
Across a dry river bed.

And into the sun for the gold cities they'd come
But for him they never returned
Yet he guarded the grotto where he'd been left behind
And the sun relentlessly burned.

But those days he'd recorded as he waited for death
In a message he left on the wall
With only the voice of the whispering wind
And the vultures that had come to call


He thought of his home
Cross the waters he'd roamed and his child he'd not ever see
And he kept his story for all those years
Until he shared it that day with me.

Yes, lost to the world for three centuries or more
I left him for others to find
The Conquistador of the Canyon of Tears
That the Spanish had left behind.