Mending Wall
by 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 neighbor 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."
Nate Notes
The new wisdom of breaking down walls challenges the conventional wisdom of "good fences make good neighbors." True wisdom lies in discerning which boundaries to respect and which boundaries to reach across to bridge a divide.
I wonder what these girls will think when Officer Friendly comes to school and passes out plastic badges and coloring books? 
Is it lame to criticize the unjust exercise of power by those in authority?
As a hypothetical situation, how many would think I was having fun and being lame if I criticize officials who rolled into the Village in Manhattan with tanks, riot gear, and automatic weapons then placed under custody all the children of homosexuals and their biological parents, while arresting a few of the life partners? I wonder, would the same judge and executive officials do the same to a gay community-- because of a phone call?! Why should I refrain from branding as hypocrite a legislator to craft bills that specifically targeting the minority alternative lifestyle of polygamy but wouldn't dare do the same to other minority alternative lifestyles that are more generally accepted and empathized with by the public? Where are the task forces established by state attorney generals, governors, and funded by the state legislatures to stigmatize other entire minority groups and specifically target and prosecute them? 
Pookah after surgery
Pookah's first cast
Pookah on the move
Pookah in the second cast
Pookah out of her cast on July 8, 2008
