Poetic Micro Essays
This column features Tripod Poems, poetic micro essays inspired by three randomly chosen words. These words become the title of the piece, are contained within the piece and are developed into observations on life in the Southwest and beyond.
Fence – Parlay – Alacrity
Parlay: to increase or change
into something of much greater value.
The Cole Porter song, Don’t Fence Me In,
speaks to the calamity of the open spaces
of the American west suddenly closed off
to cowboys moving cattle across its vastness
by the instigation of private rangelands
designated by miles and miles of wire fences.
Robert Frost reminds us of that old adage,
Good fences make good neighbors, but
the poet also observes the following.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
Territorial bullying isn’t befitting of us.
It’s a leftover aggressive ancestral habit.
We need a new definition of home.
One that doesn’t fence us in.
We need to parlay
our defensively possessive
behaviors into a consciousness
of collective prosperity.
Can we learn to live
together with alacrity
without fences?
Photo Credit: Stock
Eve West Bessier’s latest book, The Road Home, is now available on Amazon.
Direct link provided below.
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