Turf Wars

Mary's Mixed Bag over at Real Toads asked us to write about fences. The responses are amazing, and I hesitated to post mine, which is not really poetry. I thought about the fences I have read about: concentration camps, refugee camps, internment camps for displaced Japanese during WWII, the Rabbit Proof Fence in Australia, along which two aboriginal girls trekked to return to their homeland when they had been taken away to residential school, the fences that interrupt the reindeer migrations up north, where so many animals die of thirst, fenced off from water on the other side, fences in the Kalahari that impact its lions.......so many directions I could have gone.

But the fences I am thinking about most these days, are of my two neighbors across the street. It has become a Comedy of Errors, day by day and week by week. It is now escalating, and I hope they don't come to blows! I'll post it anyway, for your amusement, as an observation of human nature.

Neighbor One's driveway

was littered with old collapsing vehicles,
the skeleton of an ancient RV,

and other detritus.

The neighbors shook their heads.

Until Neighbor Two moved in

with truckloads of furniture, lumber, 

all manner of Stuff,

which spilled out onto the driveway

looking like the trailer had vomited

its contents.

The neighbors were aghast.

Suddenly Neighbor One's place

looked a whole lot better.

Neighbor Two began making piles of lumber

all over the yard. 

He began and left unfinished 

several roofed structures,

with an eventual plan of moving stuff 

from Here to There.

In his Plan, there seemed to be no plan

to move anything to the Dump.

Old broken bureaus, 

piles of discarded lumber,

two claw-footed bathtubs,

old glass windows

and two canvas storage units

clogged the driveway.

He parked his several vehicles: truck,

big trailer, smaller trailer units,

and an old wrecked RV

with a leaking roof

along the strip of grass beside the road. 

Traffic just barely managed to edge past,
drivers gritting their teeth.

His Stuff inevitably started edging towards

Neighbor One's roadside grass.

Neighbor One fenced it off 

with two by fours and bricks,

to limit  access.

Neighbor Two cleared enough space 

in his driveway

to park one of his vehicles.

Progress!

The neighborhood took heart.

But then the Stuff started creeping

beyond the boundaries

once again.

A large white moving van

next appeared in front of Neighbor One's,

bucked right up against the property-line.

Neighbor Three was Hopeful.

Maybe he was going to finally 

take stuff to the dump?

But, no.

Neighbor One had parked it there 

to stop Neighbor Two

from edging onto

his strip of grass.

Now Neighbor Two felt encroached upon.
He muttered to neighbors,
who didn't know what to say,
given the amount of mess 
in his own yard.

He confronted Neighbor One

with his complaints.

Not a good idea.

Now Neighbor One is

seriously pissed off,

after putting up with a driveway full of 

regurgitated lumber and broken down furniture,

not to mention

 having a view of

a large canvas canopy
from his living room window

for an entire year.

Neighbor Two is pissed off too.

Now he is talking about

building a high fence

from the front 

of the big white truck,

all the way along his property

so he "doesnt have to look at them".

Neighbor Three is happy

her view is

out the back of the house,

so she doesn't have to look at

either of them.

Wolves simply pee along

the boundaries of their territory.

It's ever so much easier.