At Clearing

The wall between Haskell's place and mine
Is now strewn stone. Some purple vine creeps beneath
And fallen rotwood surrounds it.
It does not want to be remade into a stone thing,
A rock fence, burn pit, or well. It wants to rest
On cold Maine earth with a mossflower bed
In the wet of balsam and green fiddlehead.
It had lived for ten thousand years
Before it was pulled from the earth
To make way for the wooden houses,
Gardens, and herb patches of settlers
Who piled it barely three feet high to define
What is his part and what is mine.

Walls fallen must be respected, like honest words:
They cannot be lifted up again,
The purposes we gave them undone
By ice and time, neglect and children.
Stacking even one stone on another
Is sacrilege. Nature abhors property:
The white man's stele making every man a saint,
The granite monuments and libraries down in Boston,
Creating importance and wisdom,
The chiseled church spire pointing at God.
But these things tumble too, like certainty,
And love is no match for gravity and time.