A rough row of trees,
mulberry and locust and hackberry,
angles nearly south by west
on the brome-blanketed slope
too small to earn the name “hill.”
Entwined among the trees and stumps
run the rusted traces
of an abandoned barbed wire fence
bearing the marks of past owners–
patches and fortifications.
One iron post punctuates
the steady march of wood–
fencepost, post, post–
a machined milestone
amid tree branches turned on end.
Decades of wind and water
settling and sagging
hillock into valley
have buried the fence’s bottom strands
beneath a cover of earth and grass.
The largest tree, a mulberry,
“Stands athwart history, yelling Stop.”*
It faces the oncoming fence.
One barbed, rusted line of wire
pierces and exits its living trunk.
David M. Frye
April 4, 2009
Denton, Neb.
*William F. Buckley, “Our Mission Statement,” National Review, Nov. 19, 1955.