Boundaries (Poetry)

The fence wasn’t high enough to stop the ball —
it flew across, the kick so high and wide,
its landing place a lottery marked
by the sudden burst of blooms.

Caught up in his savage game, the neighbour’s boy
shrilled demands for the ball’s return, unapologetic,
unaware of ruined plants and now wasted
days of patient nurturing.

My father’s voice protesting, brittle with shock,
pointed out the damage, hands eloquent
as he stooped, gathering the fractured stems,
a spray of still-born yellows buds.

All met with a shrug, a scowl that said
so what, they’re only flowers — ignorant
of shows, of cups, of prizes horticultural,
the fragile art of growing things.

‘Da-a-ad!’ the grating three-note whine
brought our neighbour down his weed-edged path,
across his threadbare, brown-green bumpy patch
that used to be a lawn.

Unmoved by evidence or reason, he declared
‘My boy has every right to play outdoors!’ defiant,
annoyed, he simply couldn’t see how a few plants
could cause so much fuss.

The boundary between them grown to so much more
than posts and wire dividing garden plots,
my father knew — his whitened knuckles told —
no fence could ever be quite high enough.