The Wall

“The Wall” first appeared in the April 2015 edition of The Thing Itself

The Wall

Small minds love lines,
straight-edged and two-dimensional,
slashed through sand or upon maps,
starkly marking this and that.

Small minds see barriers in nature,
bark of tree, rind of fruit,
skin and fur and water’s edge:
as soon as they can, they lift their own
with nimble little monkey hands.

But barriers are permeable:
deserts comingle with forests,
flora flourish in our guts,
and even minds bleed across the ether.

The wall stands, a gash
in the porous membrane of millennia,
yet birds still wing their journeys above,
water and root curl beneath,
and wind rattles its laughing way through the bars.

How foolish to expect that such a flimsy thing
could ever stop the flow of dreams, ideas or love.