For a Scottish Minimalist at the Antonine Wall

by Andrew Schelling

This unmortared rock wall seals
a Roman battalion off from the shaggy
tribal people north
a fur & feather–clad people
a leather and flint arrow people
listen to the rough throaty gibberish of their songs
their war–paint scares the boyish
conscripts
far from their homeland
far from Rome & the vineyards
from wine which gives you a moment of courage
the girls with mouthsize breasts
thighs smelling of almond oil
Today tiny poems get swapped
coins of friendship
at a place iron arrows bristled under the blue
fog, moon, & stench of fear

It seems impossible that a poem
can withstand lithium, cobalt
plutonium or facebook
new chemicals drip into the sea & soil
Is there a chance poems might slip a gap — ?
gap a fence or burrow under the rock
It is told in my country how
Coyote found out the secret of fences —
bob–wire let him through
a tuft of blue fur (you gotta look close) on the razor barb
he barked & it let him through
I like to believe Coyote
like these funny mangled poems of ours
outlasts petrochemicals & concrete
rises above the cold compounds of nature

that decay & disappear
but no way we live
standing on these old stone ramparts
no way we live long enough
to raise a friendly hand
to be sure.