New England Wall

There is a world of sweat locked up in that rock.
Walls don't build themselves. That glacial piece
cost some poor farmer and a horse a day,
or maybe more, to haul it from its gritty bed
protesting all the way from there to here,
not far at all, but more than long enough
to make them bone-tired, soaked, and dizzy
with the strain; and still, it's big, but
only one, and who knows how many cousins wait
beneath the farther grass (and will they ever get
the planting done?) to make them do it all again.

August 13 2010