Free Expression
Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 6:59 pm
I'd quite forgotten that I'd entered this poem (and as Tom Jones was fond of saying "It's Not Unusual.") so it was a pleasant moment when I opened my mail a couple of days ago to find a 'Highly Commended' certificate, especially given that this was the first time I had been serious about writing to this genre. The judge's comment read "A longer poem, necessarily so, to accommodate a lifetime, rather than a moment ....... and it is rather long so instead of posting here I will attach it. Please let me know what you think.
Oh, and by the way, I'll be getting my wife to read the replies first and to delete any she thinks might upset me.
Wazza
Buggar! For reasons unknown at this time the program won't let me upload, so after all that, I'll have to copy and paste. I hope your screen has a deep bottom.
The Fence
I remember it being built.
Solid hardwood posts and rails,
rough pine palings,
treated green faces crying proudly
“Look at me. Look at me. I’m new.”
And for a little while they heard .
And they looked.
Those who were out there.
Children on their way to school, or perhaps not;
mothers pushing strollers
along the narrow weed edged ribbon of concrete;
old men with folded newspapers in calloused hands
and cigarettes between nicotine juiced lips;
and some even slowed on their journeys
and made sounds as they looked.
If the fence didn’t entirely understand, it mattered not,
for it knew instinctively as new things do
that the sounds were good and it was proud.
The fence and I came to know each other well.
It showed me where the raised nail heads lived
and where the splintery cracks were waiting.
It was my tightrope;
my fortress wall;
my bridge across deep canyons
and flooded streams.
The weeks became months
and the months years
and the fence and I aged.
For me it was good,
reborn day upon day,
ready to embrace the new.
Then …
slowly at first
but ever more quickly;
more certainly;
the fence and I grew apart.
No longer time
for its boyish enthusiasm;
for adventures;
for challenges;
for secrets shared.
Until the time when I no longer saw it at all,
was no longer aware that it existed.
Children, mothers and old men still passed by,
but now invisible in shiny new cars
with dark tinted windows
cocooning them;
protecting them.
By now the fence no longer welcomed the day.
Ashamed of its peeling skin, its warped palings
and leaning posts
it embraced the night time
where its weathered ugliness dissolved into shadow.
Those who still walked the pathways
when the darkness was full
had different faces,
night time faces.
The fence heard their mumblings
as they stumbled against it.
And it was sad.
Age? Loneliness? Hopelessness?
Who can say?
Perhaps a measure of each,
for one stormy night
when the winds it would once have laughed at
came belching across the flats
the fence came down.
Not with resistance
but with meek surrender.
The storm had brought me out that night,
or so I thought.
Now,
in my own surrender years
I know the truth.
I had turned away, abandoned it.
It was not the storm that had brought me out that night.
It was the fence
summoning me,
forcing me to witness its indignity;
to hear its last whispered cry.
I remember the next morning
as I stood inside the fence line,
unbidden, my mind took me on a journey.
A journey of emotions so mixed that I became quite giddy
and thought for an instant that I was one with the fence.
And as a dying man sees his life flash before him,
so did I watch, from somewhere outside of myself,
a childhood of memories tumbling and swirling,
returning me to a forgotten magic.
A single tear made its slow travel across my cheek
as again I turned away.
Oh, and by the way, I'll be getting my wife to read the replies first and to delete any she thinks might upset me.
Wazza
Buggar! For reasons unknown at this time the program won't let me upload, so after all that, I'll have to copy and paste. I hope your screen has a deep bottom.
The Fence
I remember it being built.
Solid hardwood posts and rails,
rough pine palings,
treated green faces crying proudly
“Look at me. Look at me. I’m new.”
And for a little while they heard .
And they looked.
Those who were out there.
Children on their way to school, or perhaps not;
mothers pushing strollers
along the narrow weed edged ribbon of concrete;
old men with folded newspapers in calloused hands
and cigarettes between nicotine juiced lips;
and some even slowed on their journeys
and made sounds as they looked.
If the fence didn’t entirely understand, it mattered not,
for it knew instinctively as new things do
that the sounds were good and it was proud.
The fence and I came to know each other well.
It showed me where the raised nail heads lived
and where the splintery cracks were waiting.
It was my tightrope;
my fortress wall;
my bridge across deep canyons
and flooded streams.
The weeks became months
and the months years
and the fence and I aged.
For me it was good,
reborn day upon day,
ready to embrace the new.
Then …
slowly at first
but ever more quickly;
more certainly;
the fence and I grew apart.
No longer time
for its boyish enthusiasm;
for adventures;
for challenges;
for secrets shared.
Until the time when I no longer saw it at all,
was no longer aware that it existed.
Children, mothers and old men still passed by,
but now invisible in shiny new cars
with dark tinted windows
cocooning them;
protecting them.
By now the fence no longer welcomed the day.
Ashamed of its peeling skin, its warped palings
and leaning posts
it embraced the night time
where its weathered ugliness dissolved into shadow.
Those who still walked the pathways
when the darkness was full
had different faces,
night time faces.
The fence heard their mumblings
as they stumbled against it.
And it was sad.
Age? Loneliness? Hopelessness?
Who can say?
Perhaps a measure of each,
for one stormy night
when the winds it would once have laughed at
came belching across the flats
the fence came down.
Not with resistance
but with meek surrender.
The storm had brought me out that night,
or so I thought.
Now,
in my own surrender years
I know the truth.
I had turned away, abandoned it.
It was not the storm that had brought me out that night.
It was the fence
summoning me,
forcing me to witness its indignity;
to hear its last whispered cry.
I remember the next morning
as I stood inside the fence line,
unbidden, my mind took me on a journey.
A journey of emotions so mixed that I became quite giddy
and thought for an instant that I was one with the fence.
And as a dying man sees his life flash before him,
so did I watch, from somewhere outside of myself,
a childhood of memories tumbling and swirling,
returning me to a forgotten magic.
A single tear made its slow travel across my cheek
as again I turned away.
I'm visualizing a lovely post and rail - something that will stand the test of time and mellow as it ages, something that has a touch of old time work pride in a job well done and done well. I like your poem a lot.
