War is somewhere else.
Taking root over the fence, beyond the hill,
another country so far away it doesn’t seem real.
Mind your own business. Keep your thoughts to yourself.
Keep your side of the street clean.
These are things you say to yourself.
Spring is happening,
shrubs are bursting into leaf,
summer jasmine juts out of a winter sheath,
the chives erect, the lawn a mossy green.
On the garden step a bee cleans its puffed-up fur
oblivious to everything else,
birds sing.
Outside the front door the street sputters and groans,
bailiffs bang on doors with clenched fists,
paramedics make a house call,
through the kitchen window you catch
a neighbour’s bloodshot eye
(you think his stare could shatter glass),
while restless boys play the game
of pretending to play a game innocently,
about to commit their first transgression,
that long term plot to slash the tyre
of a good citizen minding his own peace at home,
unaware that his - ‘EXPLODE’ - tipping point
will be judged as inappropriate, innocuous,
the theft of a hand-made bird box,
a stone thrown at his blue porcelain cat.
