Stone walls get the last word. <br />This wall, my father built. He’s dead. <br />It stands. He hefted each rock, troweled <br />mortar, composed High-Sierra granite, <br />quartz, diorite, mariposite, slate. Made <br />the thing true, good, pleasing, and useful. <br /> <br />I mixed and wheeled the gray “mud, ” <br />cleaned tools and rocks, etched <br />mortar lines, tacked into storms <br />of his cursing, laughed and sweated <br />with him. The ones who ordered up <br />the wall are gone, replaced by ones <br />who don’t know who the mason was. <br /> <br />The wall’s become a secret, <br />an encoded version of my father, <br />his work and way with stone. The wall <br />is obvious, obscure, plain, inscrutable. <br />No one cares I know who built it, nor <br />would I argue anyone should. <br />That’s the way it is with masonry, <br />which gives the last word to the wall.<br /><br />Hans Ostrom<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-hod-carrier-reflects/
