Innovation Is a Mess

How does a creature that never
Built a wall in all ancestral
Generations one day decide
To build the first wall? It must have

Been some halfway perimeter,
Extension of the hearth circle,
Maybe a barrier in front
Of a cave or a heap of brush.

Innovations remain mysteries
To the innovators, stories
Made up by the inheritors,
And burdens dragged around the world.

Walls and fences thread everywhere,
New ones, ruined ones, crisscrossing
The planet in a tangled snarl
Of ripped, heaped-up net. Slip the net.