Poetry Friday XV - to love a wall

This week I actually wrote a poem myself, for the first time in years, two even (the second being completely silly), but it would be very much an act of "over-sharing" to inflict it on the world (maybe when I'm dead someone can find it in my drawer and analyse me - actually, I have my doubts anyone will bother, but the things said about the dead, particularly about dead poets, and the freedoms taken in speculating on motivations and character, would hardly be possible, and would be most embarrassing to hear said, while one was still alive) and I can't see that it would do anyone else particular good to read it. That got me thinking about the whole idea of wanting to be known, the selective things we want others to know and what sort of things we should even want others to know. At times I have paused, even in updating my facebook status, and thought "why do I want the world to know that particular thing?". And even in wanting to be known, there are some things too deep, too very personal, or too precious even, to indiscriminately share with the world - and I hope it actually stays that way. On the other hand though, I have been reading bits and pieces lately about the nature of true hospitality, and sharing our lives with others, that espouse the value in letting others see some of our messes (the physical messes in our homes and the personal struggles), be encouraged by seeing that we don't live in a state of constant perfection, and be a part of who we really are. Anyway, Karen brought my attention to the poem below after the last post, so I will run with Robert Frost again. The poet clearly wants to question the idea that good neighbours keep good fences, while the neighbour doesn't. Perhaps the reality is that there are just varying degrees of appreciation for varying levels of "sharing".

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun,

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows?

But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost