Good fences

Robert Frost's poem, "The Mending Wall," has afforded untold hours of reflection by scholars and school kids and the rest of us. He begins with the observation, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." It's springtime, and time for the annual repair of the stone wall between his own property and that of a neighbor. Over the months, stones have fallen away from the wall, the work of hunters, or perhaps "elves." His neighbor offers the opinion, evidently passed from his father, that "good fences make good neighbors." But the poet questions this. "Before I built I wall," he thinks, "I'd ask to know what I was walling in or out, and to whom I was like to give offense."

My wife and I happened to be traveling in Germany when the Berlin wall began to come down -- more than twenty years ago, now. People in the streets were talking about it, but it took us a while to realize what they were saying. It seemed so improbable, so unlikely, so impossible. The Cold War, symbolized by the wall, had been part of the fabric of life for me since early childhood. But something there is that did not love that wall.

The wooden privacy fence between my neighbor's house and mine was battered by wind and storm this year, and it's looking much the worse for wear. So it will have to be repaired, not so much because good fences make good neighbors, but because good neighbors care for their shared space. In fact, that's a way the walls between us come down, isn't it?