Frosted

Mending Wall  Robert Frost

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 neighbour 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" 

For shame - I can't recall for the life of me what Miss Vera (or was it Miss Lyris?  I think it was Miss Vera, but not sure) taught about this poem.  I do know that at 61, I thought it endorsed the idea of boundaries as making life easier to manage.

Gee, was I wrong.  The last six lines really got to me - the image of the neighbor moving in darkness, unable to move past his father's (and probably grandfather's & great-grandfather's) adage, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Maybe one of the farm's originally had livestock.  In that case, good fences definitely would make good neighbors (no one wants a cow wandering into your crops or munching down your garden).  But the writer has an orchard & the neighbor grows pine trees.

The juxtaposition of the practical, dour neighbor & the whimsical writer delights me now way more than it did when I was a high school sophomore (probably completely missed it back then).  "My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him,"only to be answered with "Good fences make good neighbors." 

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. 

Because he knows that, 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. 

Even he is displeased with the damage done to a wall by hunters, who tear away stones to get at their prey.  But nature?  My guess is the narrator would just as soon let Mother Nature have her way tearing down the offending fence.  But there he is, walking the fence with his neighbor, fixing what has been tumbled down (be it by nature or hunters or elves).

I looked up Mending Wall to use in a posting on boundaries.  Instead, I am left with a totally different ponder than the one I had on sitting down.

There are times when boundaries are required.  Yet, circumstances change, and so to should the boundaries.  Let them tumble if no harm can be done.  Let nature give them the old heave ho.  But most times we continue rebuilding those walls because it's what we've always done, even when the use has long ago evaporated.  

At 61, I appreciate the walls that helped me figure out the whys, wherefores & what nots of my jumbled life.  Without them, I could never have gotten to where I am at this wondrous point in time.  

But the need is no longer there.  

Nature's now free to let loose its will, swelling up & displacing stones that once demarked where others ended & I began, tumbling down, opening up a space where two can pass comfortably together.