Snap: Ending Wall
Out front where my permitted
garden-watering hours are spent
(Wednesday and Sunday mornings at six,
evenings at eight), I like to stand
staving off boredom watching for birds,
for folk and their dogs passing in the park,
and Śhello again Rose and Robiną,
our up-hill neighbours watering too.
At ten to seven on a quiet morning,
the quiet induces a trance-like state,
when Whump!
the sound of falling masonry!
Where till that moment a waist-high
grey wall of concrete blocks
separated me from Rose and Robin,
now a gap, framed by unfallen concrete,
discloses Rose, hose in hand,
in her floral dressing-gown.
ŚMax! I didnąt think you were so strong!ą
Oh, I had nothing to do with it.
Tall bushes on slight trunks have fallen too,
crushed now under the collapsed ex-wall.
Time passing, since long before either
of our houses went up, the slow swelling
underground of eucalyptus roots,
these surely, and the droughtąs shrinking
of the ground beneath, these caused the collapse.
Good neighbours donąt need fences.
10.30am Wednesday 14 November 2007
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
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