A Zone of Uncertainty
after Robert Frost

The settler in another’s territory said
he didn’t like fences or walls or coiled barbed wire:

he preferred “a zone of uncertainty,” which reminds me
of my neighbor’s treehouse hunting blind.

I imagine fear standing vigilant there,
ready to raise a rifle or make incursions

for drifts of cottonwood clotting the pond in spring.
Is there a spell for balancing these rocks?

My Michigan long acres have no fence on one side
and so the deer appear from the brushy trail on the west

and scamper across mown grass to
the trail on the far side of the east neighbor,

pulling out the sun’s stitches,
safe from the other neighbor’s front porch

firing range. A wild turkey
takes a break from tending poults

and wades in the pond shallows.
Unfenced, no privacy, few backyard cookouts,

our ducks, when we had them, weren’t safe
outside their run (some chickens don’t cross roads,

you know). It’s easier to love thy neighbor
when the gunshot air’s done reverberating.