Place. It names us.
Makes us who we are.
As when our memory
always includes foxtails
along a woven wire fence
beside the lane out to the fields.
Even when we know
these many years later
that it never was ours,
that everything we grew to believe
was based on false premises,
it still haunts us,
that foxtail in the lane
among the patch of weeds,
signifying home
and identity.
Signifying
falsehoods
as real as the barbs
on the top three strands of wire
on that fence
keeping the cows
on their side,
you on yours.
