In this week’s poem, Dennis Camire takes inspiration from Robert Frost’s musings about fences and neighbors, and he coins a new phrase for the arboreal ones that grant some seasonal privacy. I love this poem’s vivid domestic imagery and its acute and curious eye for human behavior, even in its ambivalence.

Camire’s most recent book is “Anthology of Awe and Wonder” (Deerbrook Editions). He teaches and tutors writing at Central Maine Community College in Auburn. The former director of Maine Poetry Central and the founder of the Portland Poet Laureate Program, his work has appeared in The Mid-American Review, Poetry East, Spoon River Review and elsewhere. He is also the “spokes-poet” for the mom-and-pop-owned company “Soil Foods,” which farms worms for worm castings. He will read from his new book at Portland’s Jewish Museum on Aug. 18.

Being “Neighbor-leave”
By Dennis Camire

“Good fences make good neighbors” – Robert Frost

Is what I call spring’s budding leaves’
Slowly brush stroking lush green
over the white canvas of his home
so, we each, gladly, take leave
of seeing each other on the porch
sipping coffee or grilling hot dogs
for these five months of leaves
where property lines are restored
in the pure privacy of sunbathing
or meditating unseen—though, true,
we get along well enough to borrow
lawn mowers and talk baseball.
But something atavistic abides
in our desire for an outside space
where privacy rules supreme.
And so we relish the trees’ green
even muffling drunken guffaws—
until fall’s decreasing light erases
the soft sight and sound barricade
and, by Thanksgiving, we’re again exposed
porch sitting and playing with dogs
where our diminished joy in knowing
the other clearly sees us makes us
muse on how neighborly we really are
even as both of us, on occasion,
waves the petite leaf of a hand
that, clearly, is not green and can’t
erase what we don’t want to see.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Being Neighbor-leave,” © 2024 by Dennis Camire, appears by permission of the author.