Mason-Dixon Lines

-- Justin Booth

Early Morning, New Hampshire

Near Wolfeboro,

near the vast, sparkling lake,
deep in the woods,
I swing

my legs over

the old wall and sit

on the iron-cold

stones. The wall

is longer
than any living thing, and quieter
than anything
that breathes, as we

understand breathing. It turns,
it cuts back, it approaches again.
It knows
all the angles.

Somebody
raised it
stone by stone, each lagging weight
pulling the shoulders.

Somebody

meant to sheet these green hills

with domesticity,

and did, for a while.

But not anymore.

And now the unmaking

has, naturally, begun.

Stones fall--

tilt and fall--

but slowly--

only a few a year--

into the leaves, or roll

down into the creeks, or into

the sappy knees

of the pines.

The birds

sing their endless

small alphabets.

Sometimes

a porcupine

hauls itself up and over--

or a deer

makes light of all of it,

leaping and leaping.

But mostly

nothing seems to be happening--

borders and divisions,

old sheep-holders,

the stones just sit there,

mute and tight, and wait

for the instant, gray and wild.

This morning

something slips,

and I see it all--the yearning,

then the blunt and paunchy flight,

then the sweet, dark falling.

-- Mary Oliver