The Privacy Fence

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 offense.
-- Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

My neighbor Ken -- his family was the only African-American family in our mostly WASP-ish neighborhood -- apparently was restless under our gaze. Our back doors faced one another. So he built what we usually call a privacy fence. And then he got a better job, and moved to Baltimore.

It is remarkably well-made,
and it's a gift.

I watched Ken build it
in the Saharan heat
of Alabama August Saturdays.

Consider first his choice of boards:
1 x 6's, smooth and straight,
unskewed and knothole free; and posts,
those perfect 4 x 4's, so strong,
so long, so arrow-straight.

(Ken picked them all,
one by one, a whole day's work,
almost. The rednecks
at the lumber yard were vexed.
He used such care,
not carelessness.)

Ken used no iron.
He chose the rustlessness of brass;
precisely crafted screws.

"Nail rust's too much like blood,"
he said.

And then, his measurements: exact
as edicts. . .

Hey! Ken's level, tape, and square
could count each slope and pitch,
each bump and dip
of our uneven ground.
He knew the lengths and angles
that this fence should have.

At last -- each post true plumb,
each cross-brace bubble-level,
each plank of fencing perfectly aligned --
Ken's fence was just as done
as a pharoah's pyramid. . .

Except

he built it backwards!

"Pretty side out,"
someone should have said.
"Ugly side in."
But noone spoke.

(Oh yes, there is both law
and lore that one can cite
to steer the building
of a fence aright.

According to Paul,
a builder, not the saint,
the posts and braces
are the ugly side.

Tradition
and plain common sense
dictate that we should hide
from view the ugly side

although my lawyer says
all courts decide
he owns the fence
who sees the ugly side.)

And what I want to know is this:

From whose eyes, Ken,
did who require what privacy?

And did you know
Your backwards fence belongs to me?

But Ken,
most un-phaoronic,
has de-camped

(that is, escaped
to Baltimore
and so much salary more)

and left -- sweet God! --

a poet
with a gift of fence.

-- Warren F. O'Rourke, 2004