Thirteen Ways to Look at a Fence

There are some poems where the imagery is beyond me. Last night a friend of mine was sharing with us his morning of creative writing in a workshop. They read through “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. He dug out his copy from a bag of stuff and handed it over to someone to read aloud.

XII reads “The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.” It feels like something that might come out of a fortune cookie. That said, the last fortune cookie I read was “You have to be in it to win it”. I would rather have had Wallace’s two lines. It has that mystic mantra feel about it.

My friend also told us they had been issued with homework of a kind – to write a poem about fences or borders. I thought I would combine the “Thirteen ways of looking at…” with the fence. The images are obvious there’s nothing to analyse really.  I just thought about fences and 13 ways I look at them.

1.

that which marks out the boundary

of what will be mine when

the mortgage is paid in full

2.

my warning to you

that you are trespassing and

I will prosecute

3.

something to sit on when

coming down on one side or the other

brings no clear benefits

and makes enemies

4.

it rips the wool off

a sheep’s back and then

waves a white flag of surrender

5.

think Canute by the sea commanding

the waves to come no nearer

then think cows in a field

and the fence

6.

steel yarn

like loosely knitted garter stitch

stretched and nailed between

two concrete posts

7.

wrapped around a building site

knocking on the doors of the young and foolish

saying, “Are you coming out to play?”

8.

wood and whitewashed

an afternoon’s work for

Tom Sawyer’s friends

9.

permission granted for

weeds in my garden

to crawl into next door’s border

10.

a declaration of love

to keep you safe from

predators

11.

splinters of rust

biting my fingers

making me cry

12.

invisible perhaps but

Montagues and Capulets can

never marry

13

always the reminder

that I’m not free