Something plays our perimeter fence
through the darkness of this hill,
Caught in the hours before first light
A sharp note rises still.

The wind steps through the palisade
sending ash amidst the trees
to choreograph the fires we made,
our hope, spent smoke, on tattered breeze;

for somewhere out there still asleep,
exhaling hard and slow,
an army of leather and harness,
will awake in dawn’s first glow.

But that wind in the fence sounds like the song
that my father used to play,
of a land where night falls silently,
and morning lasts all day.

Tomorrow brings much that needs repair
to rise now makes no sense.
but I need to know that it’s only the wind,
that is tugging and teasing our fence.

by Jon Hamp. 2016

Hear Jon Hamp live at the Old Barn at the Three Cane Whale gig 7 July: