Today NaPoWriMo laid this prompt:
Today, I challenge you to do the same (for one day, at least), and to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like. If that sounds a bit hard, remember that one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems was about a wall. Happy writing!
That’s certainly one of my favorites with its image of the two men walking their yearly walk along the stone wall that line their property:
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
Good fences might make good neighbors, but it’s always good to see what we’re walling in or keeping out, whether stone walls, picket fences or old disputes and bias.
The walls that topple and crumble in woods,
stones laid one atop another by hands long unknown,
keep only a memory of cleared fields
or logging roads laid through surviving trees
all walls set on the ground decay with time then
and spill their contents past a garden’s edge
or let the grass grown through until the stones
can only be found with an accidental spade.
Where I might forget the grit of anger
or stony scorn passed hand to hand to hand
family boundary standing stiff and proud
resisting blurring by forgetfulness
Time, rain and wind softens the stones to earth
exposing the heart takes care of the rest.
