Here as part in the series of dueling poems was one I wrote that has some general 
value as a commentary on Robert Frost's Good Fences. Clearly, my geological training, 
no matter how erratic (get the pun?), had some payoff.

The start of the poem refers to the fact the Bob had just retired from a K-12 teaching 
career and in his new career of college teaching had difficulties at the start.

Frost Heaves
Started 18 - 19 Sept 2002 Completed 21 Sept 2002

I wouldn't have thought an old workhorse
Would moan so much about one course
Its like you think the whole world turns
From the pittance that one course earns

How will you ever spread your wings
When you focus on such petty things
There still is time for you to learn
Or else in Hell you're sure to burn.

A grander theme is Robert Frost
For while we rhyme at any cost
His golden words have been embossed
While no one cares if ours are lost

"Good Fences" is the Piece I'll pick
Simplicity is its secret trick
But its overt smugness makes me sick
Poking fun at a country hick.

He builds stone fences without a thought
While Frost tries him in moral court
Stones were not what the farmer sought
Would have to be my first retort.

For each and every single boulder
Heaved up from an epoch older
When the climate was so much colder
The lower sea exposed a polder

And snow never melted from the ground.
This was a time we were not around
But damming evidence has been found
That moving ice sheets grind and pound

Long after they're gone and all is still
Their melt water hollowed lakebeds fill
And rubbled moraines we now call till
Are laced with stones that cause farmers ill
When they break plows as you know they will

Farmers dread that their plows will break
So they haul stones until they ache
Good fences is what those stones make
As Frost well knew, make no mistake.

You see that it takes a geologist
To illuminate truths the critics missed
So with a literal flick of the wrist
I add this verse to our lengthening list