Yarrow House

All Walls Fall

Some days I sat at the table, 
running my cup in circles drawing flowers 
in the spilled coffee and watching 
the gray day chill into night. 

I counted my daily tasks like pills 
to be taken regularly against despair. 
I dreaded a grim future, walled 
it off, my own great Chinese wall. 

But all walls fall, and sooner than later 
the barbarians break through.  First thirty, then 
forty, and suddenly I find myself on the far
side of the border I’d erected,

embracing the invaders in bittersweet surrender.
And surprised at the life they poured, 
the joy and wildness, into my flagging spirits.
				

Published in Borderlands, Court Street Press, Seattle: 1999

Onetime reproduction for non-resale purposes permitted by the author with the following credit line:  by Judith Yarrow