Walls

Who built the ragged stone field walls
that hide in the forest? They’ve seen
better days—beaten down by footsteps
and long gazes; held together only

by their human forgottenness.
Someone dragged that errata from the dirt,
boulder and slab, on a diet of sour bread
and sweet preserves; loaded them

on a sun-bleached cart and whipped
a well-loved animal into place.
We like to line things up—a trail
left in the grass, the mark of tectonic plates

moving away from one another,
generations of beaded civility in pursuit
of a perfect line; some of them waiting to be
completed, others just beginning.

Trapper Markelz is a husband, father of four, poet, musician, and cyclist, who writes from Boston, Massachusetts. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the journals Baltimore Review, Stillwater Review, Passengers Journal, and others. You can learn more about him at trappermarkelz.com.