Old Fencing
I
Some lost, desparate urge for demarcation
set it up, posts packed round with stone
and the horizontals tacked into place
with diamond-headed nails and the flat
back of an axehead. A space
shows where a gateway stood.
II
This was the wood that could have made
homes, ships, windmills. When the blade
bit the trunks and the saw rasped,
the intention was not to split the land
but to win it over. The axemen gasped -
the fence was all that was put up.
III
Fencing is like a man, over-stretched
and weakened. This fence has fetched
out hatreds. No-one cares at all how
it now leans: dogrose uses it to rise,
birds nest under it, it’s split by snow.
The sad wood tilts and succumbs to rot.
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