Farm fences flank me as I walk on Rabbit Lane two days before Christmas.  Walking the length of the country road, I begin to contemplate the nature of fences.  Fences keep the cattle in their pastures, while keeping pheasant poachers out.  Fences remind me of the limitations I put on myself through fear and doubt.  I think of social, legal, political, and relationship boundaries.  I ponder that each cedar fence post used to be a juniper tree thriving in the Utah desert.  I imagine lines of soldiers marching into battle in distant early-morning mists.  Ultimately, we can choose to transcend many of our life’s fences, like the butterfly that simply flies over, as if the fences do not exist.

FENCES

Grain-field fences march
away in a disciplined line,
cedar post after cedar post,
rough-barked,
each tugging its barbs
taut as burning guns
at soldiers’ cheeks, marching
straight and away at an acute angle
to the way I would go,
hemming me in with wicked wire
points, urging me down, at the risk
of gash and scar, the direct
and dusty disciplined road,
while a Tiger Swallowtail
lazily wafts its easy way across
the fence to flutter above
the ripe wheat tops,
and a Western Kingbird
darts here and there,
erratic, up and down,
above all artificial lines, chasing
invisible insects overhead.