The Worn Fence

In a Devonshire churchyard high above

the sea we study the tilting gravestones

as the children play tag by the cliff’s edge.

It goes without saying whole lives were written in stone here.

The long ones—seventy, eighty years—we pass by easily.

But the young ones—two toddlers in the same year,

a fourteen-year-old followed by his sixteen-year-old sister,

a nine-year-old, a newborn—make us pause

as the voices of our children echo

off the stone and mossy walls.

We look away from the graves to the sea.

But who can feel much for the majestic horizon

when distracted by a worn fence teetering at the edge,

separating so much from so little?

We consider the precarious angle of each post,

the degree of force it took to thrust it

into the rocky ground and the force

it would take to knock it back out again.

Then we consider the weight of each child—

heavy enough to flatten the high grass and heather

and what’s left of their parent’s hearts should they fall,

but light enough to rise above us even now in

cries of chase and capture and being set free.