Nathan E. Lewis

As you know from this morning’s news, Homeland Security is racing to complete a 670 mile fence along the Mexican border. In my lifetime the Berlin Wall came tumbling down - one of the finest moments in modern world history! (It was erected in August 1961, three months before I was born - all 96 miles of it.) The iron curtain evaporated - a freedom few of us hoped to witness in our lifetime! There is something wholesome and heartening about walls coming down. Our Poet Laureate, Robert Frost, gave to us “Mending Wall,” preserving the American adage, “Good fences make good neighbors.” It sounds prudent but Frost rightly questions the need for walls, opening his poem, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” He repeats the line again later in the poem, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall/ That wants it down….” There is something within me that wants it down. I wonder what the source of that longing could be? (more…)