Fence Between

Between the lake and the well-worn road,
between the wildness at my back
and the coming-and-going of the world before me,
I have built my dwelling—
not in isolation, no, never in isolation,
but in that tender space where boundary and connection are one.

The fence stands: practical, humble—
open to the waters behind (for what fence could hold back a lake?),
open to the road ahead (for we must come and go, must we not?),
but along the sides, along the sides where neighbor meets neighbor,
there it rises, marking mine from yours, yours from mine,
that ancient human need to say: here I end, here you begin.

But the fence was never meant to be a wall.

Forty years ago, a neighbor, good and hopeful, asked permission:
“May I plant a vine? It will grow thick and green,
it will soften the metal, it will feed the birds.”
And I said yes.

Yes to the planting.
Yes to the patience.
Yes to the slow, steady weaving of root and stem,
the decades of green accumulation,
the dense, living curtain that made the fence disappear
into something more than itself—
a home for wrens and sparrows,
a feast for bees in summer,
clusters of purple fruit for the wildlife through all seasons,
even in the depths of winter when little else remains.

The vine grew as vines do: relentless, generous, chaotic.
It did not ask permission.
It covered what was metal with what was living.
It made of our boundary a dwelling place.

And the birds—oh, the birds—
they nested in its tangles,
raised their young in the green safety of intertwined stem and leaf,
sang at dawn from perches we never intended but were grateful for.

And the insects—honeybees and bumblebees and the small,
nameless pollinators— they hummed their ancient work,
drawing sustenance from flower and fruit,
asking nothing, giving everything.

This was the covenant, unspoken:
that what grows between us
can nourish more than just ourselves.

But one day,
without warning, without word,
the vine was cut.

A great swath torn down in heaps,
cleared away—
a preference, an aesthetic, a choice
made on one side of the fence
without conversation across it.

Suddenly I found the fence exposed,
the metal showing through like bone,
the vine gaping, wounded, confused,
its severed arms reaching toward nothing.

I stood before the gap and felt—what?
Not anger, not quite.
Not grief, not exactly.
Something older, quieter:
the ache of discovering that what you thought was shared
was only ever borrowed.

It’s clear: the roots are on that side.
There is the right.
The right to cut, to clear,
to prioritize new choices over my continuity.
The right to reshape what grows between us
without asking, without warning, without wondering
what else might be affected.

But rights are not the same as rightness, are they?

The fence is mine; the roots are theirs.
The vine belongs to both and neither.
The birds—whose are the birds?
The bees—who consulted them?

Who speaks for the wren who returns in spring
to find her nesting place torn down?
Who considers the forty years of patient growth,
the agreement made with nature,
the green cathedral we were entrusted to keep?

I will not rage because rage is easy,
and this calls for something harder:
the long, patient work of deciding
what kind of neighbor I will be
in the face of what has been chosen on the other side.

Perhaps I will replant.
Perhaps I will write,
not in anger but in question:
Did you see the birds? Did you know how long it had grown?
Could we not have spoken first?

Or perhaps I will let the gap remain,
a visible reminder that between us now
there is less green and more metal,
less life and more boundary,
and that this, too, is a kind of truth.

But here is what I know, what I hold onto
as I stand between the lake and the road,
between wildness and the world:

The vine will grow again if I let it.
The birds will return if there is a place to return to.
The bees will come if there are flowers.

And I—I will choose, must choose,
whether to cultivate again what has been torn,
whether to trust again in slow, patient growth,
whether to believe that a fence
can still be more than a division,
can still be a place where life, unbidden, takes root.

What will I do?

I do not yet know.

But I know this:
the lake still laps at my back,
the road still hums with passing,
and somewhere in the torn vine,
a new shoot, green and stubborn,
is already reaching toward the sun.