Mending Fence

Amazing the care a fence needs,
unannounced repairs;
how paint wears, almost disappears.
Wood rots
in eight or ten years.

Fence rails need constant repair;much less do posts,
though they, in turn,
are dug up
and stacked on a pile to burn.

Sometimes there seems not a trace
left of what stood upright in place
and seemed to mark every field
and attest
large annual yields.

Such things as these, once assumed,
have taken to making demands,
ever more are driven by pain,
to make me aware
of their need for attention and care.

I must present myself as broken,
as the token I have become:
swept away by flood
and needing like a guttering candle
every drop of blood.

So am not a man any longer,
blow about like sand;
like the cornmeal
I ground for myself, only now
by hand.