Fences

New England’s poet talks of fences,

of the need, good neighbors make,

“one on a side,” “walling in or walling out,”

but he reminds us, too, that “something there is

that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down,”

and perhaps, it is us unloving, kept to our own side,

walled out and looking across the fence,

over the wall, ourselves a “frozen-ground-swell”

sent “to spill the upper boulders”

so we can pass, unimpeded, “to have the rabbit

out of hiding, to please the yelping dogs”

we’ve become these years, wanting what we lack

and cannot have, coveting our neighbors’

and forgetting the walls and fences

and New England’s poet’s words,

“good fences make good neighbors.”