There is something that bothers my neighbor
That irritates her, makes her skin: jump, crewel
That creates a humming stammer in her voice
And even makes gaps, silent ones as she talks
To my wife, about the heap across the street.
Her kind of row is another thing indeed
Where she doesn’t let one idea, spin
Not even one iota of that fall
Lest she lose her focus once and for all.
We are talking about last week’s branches,
And what’s hiding under that heap I see.
To please my neighbor, the branches I mean,
I’d have to get rid of the pile of rubbish
The one, everyone tosses garbage underneath
That lays so crude across the street, in the park.
But if one looks around we find much more:
My wife let my neighbor know this, that day
By day, her dogs piss and shit on our lawn,
Even on the light pole, and into the heap
The one she keeps talking about: an eye on.
She watches them all right, when you are looking.
To each this burden now has fallen, the branches:
We have to use nice words to keep the balance:
“The neighbor up the block has a junk car,” my
Wife complains to her, she has no more to say.
Oh, just another kind of neighborly game,
One to each his own, it adds up to little more:
She is all heap and we are all branches.
She will never understand my branches,
Nor I, her focus on the heapthat
We alone are responsible for its parting.
If I could put an idea in her head
“Should we not all work together to rid
Our neighborhood of branches, messy dogs
Loafing cars: making for good neighbors?”
Before I hired the branch cuter, I asked him:
“Please take the branches with you, when done!”
He also is a neighbor who lives nearby.
Something irritates my neighbor about us
My wife and I, whom she gives offence to;
She moves with slyness it seems to me,
Not of concern over those dry old branches.
I’m sure she likes having thought she done well
For the Neighborhood: firmly defending her heap.
*#1314 (From a morning dream came Branches 4/14/06)) Written in Lima, Peru))
See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com