Finalizing Our Aged Property by Rae Spencer

The exhausted land reclaimed

Our fence-line
Time blanketed
Obscene barbs
With perfumed honeysuckle

A million twining flowers

With steely resolution
Wrested rusty strands
Toward the soil

A war of decades

Waged on a suspension bridge
Sagging posts and braided wire
Fatigued by the surprising weight
Of so many fragile vines

At last the posts cracked

In surrender
Gave up their substance
To termites and rain

And our boundaries

Crumbled into joyous ruin

Nothing left of fences
To say where we should end
And something else begin


Rae Spencer, Virginia, USA