Something there is that doesn’t love a wall

My husband took us for a walk in the woods he played in as a child. There were several of these old stone walls converging in the middle of “nowhere.”

Once, it was “somewhere.” Someone’s fields. Several someones’ fields… Three walls met at this ancient oak, which still had rusted barbed wire emerging from its bark at several points. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Or so one man in Robert Frost’s poem says.

For perspective, here it is with the dog…

How old must it be? It’s lived through many years there — long enough to see at least this group of neighbors building and mending their walls. But now the forest is reclaiming this ground.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast…

And yet, something there is that does love a wall, too — loves being reminded of a larger order that we’re all a part of, and loves, always, to be reminded of good poetry and meditation.