As I was skirting by
The boundary of my property,
A weathered, old, gray post
Caught my eye,
Riddled with wrinkles up and down,
Threaded with barbed wire strands haphazardly,
Salient as a ghost
Amid the grass, over-grown.

Timber that kept its post
Loyally through long, sun burnt years,
It stopped the things this side
Getting lost
And long held that side over there,
Now barbed wire like a rusted pair of shears
Bunches of grass divide,
Its wrinkles gouged deep with care.

If there were cattle here
Today or there it could not hold
Them in any more than that
Loose armed wire
Keeps its own intervals apart,
But those mares there are easily controlled
And tame enough to pat,
Considering all barbs sharp.

Here there is only grass
And I don’t ask much of a post.
If that one there could talk
When I pass
It would remark upon the weather
In a wry drawl, a couple words at most
To make me slow my walk
Enough to think we stopped together.

.