Desert Fences

One might return home. One might not. Either way, home haunts. Every fourth of July in what was not always the heat Phoenix now has, I climbed these buttes. All the way to the top and then as sun set, I would run back down them. Perfectly navigating rocks as if flying. Later when I read the Carlos Casteneda books, I understood the description of Don Juan's flight to be that running in the light where edges blurr. Dusk. Now fear runs like this fence does: chaotic and desperate in an unsuccessful attempt to stop. To stop what? To what end, a fence? A fence in a desert landscape is funny. Odd actually as it erects its authority on a field that refuses it totally. Find me a right angle here. Go ahead. Well the pathetic failure of fences is precisely what the "patriots" further south in my home state of Arizona (like Glenn Spencer) have as their rationale for building a wall. We agree on the failure of fences. We do agree on that. But then the bully of a wall (no matter how one builds it) is another matter. At least with a fence, the wind still blows. What if we stopped building? All of it. Let the wind and water and light and sound and all of us wash over what one day could only otherwise hold ruins. (November 28, 2017)