Growing "Stones"

 

The stones were scattered throughout the field...

every Spring another crop 

would rise to the surface again, 

to be meticulously gathered

and stacked along the perimeter

differentiating our land from theirs;

subdividing, eliminating any question

of whose crops or herds belonged where.

How could we know that land that we claimed

was only ours on borrowed time?

The natives here before us knew we didn’t own the land;

the waters nor the air are not here for our command.

We are caught hook, line, and sinker in the follies we believe

taught to think our legacy’s in all we have achieved.

Now those walls become the ghosts

of the farmsteads that have passed...

What we thought might be forever never truly lasts.

© Ginny Brannan 2024

Photo by Charlie Parant at Appetite for Photos. Used with expressed written permission.

One of the NaPoWriMo sites offers suggestion to write for Day 2, Not Your Usual Harbinger.