A Sonnet on Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”
Two neighbors both bring bricks in burly hands,
their gnarled knuckles ready for the task
of keeping neighbors friendly when demands
of conversation’s more than they would ask.
They’ll share a calloused smile once they’ve returned
each spring, to make sure neighbors will atone
with reparations for the damage earned,
effects of beasts and weather on each stone.
And then, the falsehood raised by hearty voice,
“Good fences make good neighbors!” Lovely wall,
beset with elves themselves who have no choice
but play their mischief, summer, winter, fall.
Returning home, as each walks back alone,
they’ll wave a middle finger to the bone.
Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhymed verse with traditional meter and generally full of humor. First published in The First Literary Review–East in November 2016, since then in Pure Slush, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually rescue cats and dogs underfoot.