Every child
who grew up on a farm
in the Midwest
knows barbed wire.
Scooting under, climbing
over fences meant
being snagged
more than once by the sharp,
twisted knots meant
to keep cattle and children
from wandering.
Farm fencing
Odd that something so inconsequential and utilitarian as a fence can be the one thing that makes a farm in Maine take you back to Iowa. Most of the fences in New England are constructed of rocks, and I love them. The pockets of farm country in Maine are so far removed from the wide open farmland of the Midwest, but this simple fence made this countryside seem so familiar and nostalgic, because I remember climbing over and under them. But this one doesn’t have the one thing that I was most familiar with: barbed wire.
