Wall

Long after some cataclysm
has wiped the world clean of old men,
and children no more laugh with glee
when spring peepers sing,
these overgrown New England hills
still will bear the signature
of the ones who struggled here
to make this rugged place a home.
The old stone walls
that crisscross the wild hills
are sign of a vision of cleared land,
of fertile fields and herds of cattle,
of barns and houses and steeples raised.
Sinewed arms and sweaty backs
piled granite slabs in imagined lines,
claiming a piece of unclaimed earth
to live where love was always hard,
to watch a son or daughter grow,
to wait as nights and winters
came and went,
and then, at last, to be buried in this earth
and consecrate it once again with hope.
Walls are the footprints
of those who dreamed--
a great and foolish dream--
that some piece of earth
could be theirs.

--Timothy Haut, Feb. 28, 2016