The Old Wooden Fence
It has attained the end forever yearned.
The old wooden fence beaten and torn through the years by the wind and the sudden storms all that nature could conspire to bring. yet it somehow managed to hold firm in its simple purpose to keep the strangers out and the restless in.
Blistered by the scorching sun and frozen with the winter sleet merciless in their approach to them a barrier to break in their unstoppable freedom but the struggle has its toll and its frame once strong has since grown old.
The workmen said its time to take it down and build a new one in its place its tired planks now broken and spent unfastened to the point of disgrace the nails have left gaping the place where long they had held firm the wounds now far beyond repair.
So the members carelessly taken down and thrown upon a glowing heap what once were sap-filled limbs its young wood firm and green now lies kindling dry for the burn and to the earth from which it sprung it now solemnly returns.
Old wooden fence it is no more nor any sort of wood at all simple offspring of the earth ashen dust its final call but also fire and heat and light it takes its long-awaited flight set free from the nails and the wind and the storm.
And it is restored though vanquished in flame now born anew an ennobled slave released to climb unbound through the clouds a soul set free from the past and the stony ground
And it is reborn a child of the sky no more to sustain the wound or the pain coursing the air never meant to return for now it has attained the end forever yearned.
Poem originally in song by Author. Copyright © 2001, Robert Metivier