Upon the rocks where the baubles of broken blue glass wink at the sun
and gather strands of rusted wire with the occasional bloodroot
wildflower, a man is unbending in his efforts to construct a stone rail
fence. Specks of mica in the rock are like lizards basking in the heat
of a mid-day or a man's thumb placed squarely about these noisome
stones clattering as one more of their number comes to rest and home.
The line of cherokee rocks bends first up, then downward in movement
across the meadow much like a labouring oar listing but finally brought
into play. The glitter of turquoise water with jewels of light on her
passing wave--like wings entrances much as does this fence moving
smartly into the space of green and earth.
The man, a stooped farmer, has toiled for days to clear this land for
tillage. His impact seems negligible to efforts given yet gradually he
surmises a scant return is being paid. He picks a wildflower nudging
its face through calloused stone and watches the juice break onto
forward skin. An old saying reminds him insect bites will lessen should
he smear the liquid onto exposed limbs. He is perspiring now and the
rocks shove face-like projections into the consciousness of forest and
that periphery area, his clearing.
The fence begins to melt as if in a haze and the logic of clearing this
vast expanse of earth and rock escapes him. He thinks of each rock as
the buttress of a treasure box he has just hidden and is loath to
dislodge further stones. He ponders Christ's parable of the Kingdom of
Heaven likened unto treasure buried in a field. For reasons unclear but
not necessarily related to the blood juice, he imagines the fence to be
the one at Chancellorsville where a Union regiment died to a man and
was found by a burial brigade with apple blossoms stuck to each
bloodied face.
Evasive now, he perceives the fence to be the one stopping Pickett's
charge at Gettysburg or that fence at Mons in northern France which
turned a war. He begins to rummage through the piled stones for spent
bullets and other mementoes of a great battle. He relives the story of
the Angel of Mons[1].
As he dislodges more and more stones, he showers chunks of limestone
and granite backward onto the barren field. The shower of rock is
somewhat reminiscent of Ungava's meteor spray or splintered debris
forced down a soldier's foxhole. Perhaps a runic stone will fall from
tangled roots when he burns the dead stumps of trees deciphering once
and for all why men labour or think at all. The fence swirls on and on
in growing amnesia becoming the very touchstone of all purpose, stones
from Jericho's Wall or the passkeys taken from our material existence.
Gabriel, the archangel, will sound his trumpet here, he is assured. The
dead and unburied of nameless acts of toil and dread will stand a
stone's breadth across this fence. The Face of God will be seen in the
pact nature has made with earth and stone.
He turns and puts his hat by a tree, lifts a canteen and imagines what
all might be should vegetation ever be coded and stones prophets to
their accordion earth.
[1] Allied soldiers at the first battle of Mons believed certain of
their numbers had escaped destruction by the intervention of a Heavenly
spectre.