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The Neighbors
When a man and woman built their house
on the hill behind mine, thus ruining
forever the satisfaction I took
in seeing no house but mine
in any direction,
I felt cheated and bitter.
I live at the foot of the hill,
I thought, and any time they wish,
they can peer into my yard.
But they were peerless people,
most times quiet as the trees
they had not cut, their voices murmurs
in the wind, their jackets flashing
colored wings among the branches.
The woman gave birth to a son,
who calls my name cycling down the road
as though I were his long-lost friend.
So I live at the foot of the hill,
and any bitter man who would climb it,
meaning my neighbors harm,
must first get past me.
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Garret Keizer is the author of The World Pushes Back (Texas Review Press), winner of the 2018 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and of eight prose books including Getting Schooled, Privacy, and The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want. His poems have appeared in Harvard Review, The Hudson Review, Raritan, and The New Yorker. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review.
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Author: Terence Winch
