The fence line

"The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it." — Psalm 24:1

I walked the property this morning.

I do not do it every week the way Earl did, but I do it when the weather is right and the morning is right and my knees are willing, and this morning was all three. I put on the barn jacket and the boots that are too big because they were Earl's and I have never bought a pair of my own because his fit well enough with thick socks, and I walked the fence line from the back gate to the road and along the road to the front and back around.

The pasture is brown. The neighbor cut it in September and the stubble is short and dry and the field looks wider without the grass, the way a room looks bigger when you move the furniture out. The cattle are on his side of the fence, three of them, standing in the way cattle stand — motionless, facing the same direction, as if they have all agreed to look at the same thing and have not decided what it is.

The trees along the back fence are bare at the top and gold at the bottom, which is how they let go — from the top down, the way a candle burns. The ridge behind them is rust and orange and in two weeks it will be gray and in two months it will be white and I have watched this happen every year for forty-seven years and the watching has not gotten old.

The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it. The cattle. The stubble. The fence that needs a wire tightened in the southeast corner, which I noticed and which I will not fix and which Earl would have fixed before he came inside. The barn with its door that does not close all the way. The dogwood in the side yard with its last red leaves. The three acres that are mine the way anything is mine, which is to say they were here before me and will be here after me and I am walking them in the meantime.

Lord, I walked the fence this morning. I noticed the wire. I left it.