“A wall,” the farmer thought. To mark my land, to keep my crops, to guard my sheep. “I will build a wall.” Toiling for months in the sun, the heat as much as the cold, turning up soil to turn up the stones. At the start and the end of long days, always adding more. But it didn’t keep out the birds, it didn’t keep out the fox or the wolves, the deer or the weeds, it didn’t even keep in the sheep. And it didn’t keep the forest from returning when the farmer went into the earth. The forest just waited patiently, knowing all along that it was only a matter of time.
-Alexis Clements, 2017
composed while at the Millay Colony for the Arts