D. Ellis Phelps“In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security informed landowners along the northern edge of the Rio Grande that the new border fence would be cutting through their properties.” Texas Monthly, 2011 rust colored steel cuts through melon & mesquite chops this land in half where hundred year-old oaks were felled in the weld security unsecured from this landowners porch: no more pastoral view no more free passage from pasture to pasture where he and his father and his father before him who came: chasing the dream grew cotton and corn sorghum and cane for a hundred years & more now this farmer who feeds us must ask permission to pass from one piece of his own land to another |