The Absence Of...

It isn't just the fence. More, really, the striking green manicured lawn that has overlayed its traces. A pasture, more a lawn now, unending, that looks as if it has always been there.

Not just the absence of the fence, then, but the power of what erased it, rolling acres of green grass, each blade so even, regimented, evidently striped by a riding mower, not even a mound or hole where the posts once stood.

It's not just that I don't see the fence, it's that I can't even trace its path from memory.

It's not just that the fence is gone, but that it has been replaced by acceptable, planned perfection.

It's the discontinuity in me -- between the shock that ripples through me still and the ordinary outward pattern that begs to take its place.