Through these woods now aflame more brightly than
When a warmer sun made their filter green
My wandering path a stone fence follows
Of the unknown someone who held a deed

I want to see the hands that built this wall,
The construction of his life's boundaries
Chose one stone and rejected another
So neatly set one next and one upon

Were his hands like the hands of my father
Craggy knuckled mountains and blue rivers?
The rough hands of a farmer and framer
Whose work separated but does not fall

Though seasons and frosts may cause upheaval
And feet tread where they were not meant to go
The tresspassers were taller than these trees
When it was built and dryly set in time

A winding marker whose lines no longer
Make declarations, call the land by name
A simple and lowly expression of
The land's adoption and yet, by whose hands?