The Good Neighbor

A wooden fence encloses her Sacramento yard
and every time she considers it
the vein in her forehead throbs
in thinking of the other side.

The neighbor’s trumpet vines climb the slats
poke through the cracks and cascade over the top,
wild, free, and untended.

His garden was once on a magazine cover,

the cornerstone of neighborhood tours.

A quiet neighbor who kept himself to himself

but passed her tips and cuttings from over the fence.

 

It was spring when he left the gate unlocked.

Her irises were in bloom, rain in the air,

the day she arrived home to yellow tape  

wrapped the length of their adjoining fence.

 

Policemen with dogs stomped the herbs

and the baby’s breath and traumatized the cat

lying in the sun on their dash across her yard

to follow the killer's path lest the trail

grow cold and dissipate like the promise of rain.

 

She walks her paths through autumn color,

checks her locks and eyes the roofline.

She tore out the grass in front and converted

it to a rose garden—a white border of shrub roses

and statuesque teas of yellow, carmine, and pink.

Waist high, they point their thrones skyward.

The prompt today from Claudia at the Poet's Pub is to write a poem about gardens and/or gardening. How could one resist? It's summer and it's all I do, even when I'd rather be writing. Thank you for reading about the good neighbor who is a no-more man and the woman who prevails.