Well I recall the hands
that built the fences:
young bucks from town,
athletes paid to work out,
their bicep powered grips
gouging post holes into
baked dry earth, manual
machines driving down
wood posts, stretching a net
of wire for miles, their dry,
cracked, calloused fingers
ratcheting the tension
drum tight so that wire sang
a low D sharp
against icy north winds.

So much labor spent to box in
desolate prairie, the exact same
rusted browns inside as out.
No green anywhere. Such folly
to section acres in uniform geometry,
an offense to the eternal feminine.

No division can stand up
to constant assault—elk and deer
herds vaulting, wind piling snow
like dunes on a shore. The land wants
to be whole. Subject to laws
of gravity, taut wire pressures posts
to lean, to ease sharp angles
to comfortable slack. Buffalo grass
climbs a barbed trellis claiming
any empty space, and the north
mossed cedar posts soften toward decay.