Walls

At dusk
I come upon the ruins
of an ancient wall.
It's graying rocks,
lichen-covered and rain-smoothed,
rise like disintegrating teeth
above the black-eyed Susans
and Queen Anne's lace
of the field.

Whose hands gathered and stacked these stones
and to what purpose?
Was I to be kept out?
Were you to be kept in?
And who fell first,
    the wall
    or its builders?

At dawn,
returning to the field,
I can not find the wall.
Sparrows chatter,
greeting me as they seek seed.
"May it be thus,"
they say,
"with all the barriers
your kind erects."

Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.