Form/Roll/Die

You follow their instructions
and become one of them,
all of you in line, all as rigid as posts
in the prairie —
here are your slots,
your holes — get in there
and stand, hold up
the fence and hold back
anyone threatening
to get by you.

You are there a long time,

Late one day, a wind
takes you down.
Cracked but still sound,
you tumble toward the ditch.

Not long after a boy takes you home,
balancing you
on the back of his bike.
Sets you by the side
of the fire pit
in his backyard strewn
with roadside junk where he
makes sculptures. He and his friends
sit on you and smoke, talking
of how they were fated
to be here.  It’s a crapshoot,
one of them says one night:
how some end up stiff and accepted,
others remain rootless, fluid,
free.

You hold them up.
It’s your job: settle into the ground,
support
another person in the role
they serve.

It’s no crapshoot, you think.
From assigned form
to accidental roll to
the final cast die, you just do
what you were meant to do.