The previous owner,
Was a seedy punch-face man
Pudgy and pink
And I disliked him
He was belligerent and sly
Looking for a score
An advantage
I watched his pudgy little boy
Look over the edge of the cut and fill,
That held my house like a hand,
And ask me if he could come down.
I invited him to dinner once or twice
He looked up at my three sons
And wanted to join the family.
I disliked the fellow,
The previous owner,
But, if nothing else, he appreciated distance
And privacy.
He stayed back on his little plot of ground
And he left the thick hedgerow of trees
So that I wouldn’t see him
Nor he me.
We needed no fences
For neither of us looked
Nor wanted to see
Or to be seen.
Before the previous owner moved away
He came to our front door
With his wife and son
And invited himself in.
We spent the only half an hour,
Together in a room,
The only half hour in all those years.
He wished me well
While his son waved goodbye
I stood there baffled waving too.
When you moved in
You built a fence—an ugly fence—
Of pipe and wire and paint.
You took down enough of the trees
So that I had to see
Your chicken coop-like playhouse
Your broken power pole
Secured with yellow
Polypropylene rope
Tied to a tree
That belonged to me
Your perpetual
Driveway development
Moved ever closer towards
The property line
And when you realized that I could not help but see
You built an even uglier fence
And painted it
So that it would stand out
In my face
Leaning like the electric pole
On your piles and scars on the hillside,
Like a cleft palate
Or a harelip.
The previous owner
Might have known me
And me, he…
But you, my friend?
That could never be.
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