Too many walls

Too many walls

How does that a neighbour make

I can hear the old guy

On the phone

He leaves few spaces

Between his words

For any meaningful rejoinder

Perhaps it is a sermon

As it is a Sunday

For goodness sake

Move on up

Do the hippy-hippy-shake

If it seems appropriate

How would it be

If he could see me

As we sit

In splendid isolation

Cut off by walls

Open to the air

Wide open spaces

Up ahead

Perhaps my voice

Would be an answer to his prayer

Floating up from the flat below

Would that he might pause

To consider

The intrusion

A world confused

By appropriation

Otherworldly apparitions

Forming in reflection

Windows masked by

Venetians

Who were, once upon a time

Good sailors

Now they lie

Blindly tethered

Anchored in position

Denying access

To the apparent drift

Of continental dreamers

Trying to connect

With a new world,

Adherents

Of secret possibility

Dust motes drift by

Sunbeams of suburbia

Casting tiny shadows

On white walls

Wood nymphs

Watching from trees

Play tricks

As life floats by

On gentle gusts

Of hot air

As the conversation

Becomes more vituperative

Goodwill takes a backseat

To the hunting of weak spots

Opinion is traduced

The need to intervene

Rarely threatened

Hangs in fine balance

The wall, an insufficiency

It is not the height

Which holds it back

There is a flimsiness

Characteristic of modern

Living

Perhaps it is not how tall

But how thick the wall

Behind which

We hide

That determines

What we have

All come to believe

Is a virtue in the heart

Of all good neighbours

It is the parapet

Upon which we depend

To maintain

Our solace

Without constant recourse

To the comfort

Of a pimm's number one cup

And a bar of chocolate.