After Robert Frost‘s Mending Wall
“Good fences make good neighbors?”
I’d concur
if politics between religious right
and ecumenical progressive left
are given rein to cultivate a plot
with bitter slur
and deed to seed the garden path with blight.
For in the blur
of flags competing in the yards bereft
of brotherhood, the middle ground is fraught
with peril to the social common good —
no saboteur
of democratic norms can bridge the cleft.
But in the whir
of mower blades that designate the spot
where grass encroaches in our neighborhood,
no fence is needed with a friend to thank
who will defer
in taking turns to guard each other’s flank.
(His name, coincidentally, is Hank.)
2022 Mary Boren
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