My neighbour's dog's confused.
When I shake my carpets clean
the fringes whip and crack,
flicking some decisive message out
through the chicken-wire that defines our quarter-acres
and keeps us from each others' throats.
The dog barks at me ferociously;
I roll a carpet up.
He sniffs the air and lifts a leg
to show me his opinion of the thing I said,
his hairy penis squirting through the wire.
All this is as it should be,
so why don't I hang mine out
in the breeze, and properly reply?
Is it this omission
which sends him into frenzy?
I've crossed all bounds by taking hold
of simmering disputes so publicly.
Council mediation and police aren't welcome here.
Tip-toe round the sleeping dogs.
Bite your tongue; hold your breath:
the teenage boys will grow up and go away.
"We keep to ourselves," their Dads told me
with ponderous morality, when I first arrived.
A man crossed heavy, tattooed fore-arms
and nodded in quiet emphasis.
The dark, squat bottles we were drinking from
sat on the table between us
like copies of a contract.
I drank, but have since disputed
this blue heeler's incessant barking,
his owner's grinning cars and their throbbing engines,
the late-night, boozy voices and the blaring stereos.
My offerings to the local deities have been unwelcome gifts.
Inside the house, I stripped off smelly carpets
and found old hardwood boards.
I sanded, filled and polished them
then stroked the varnish in.
The butted timbers are light and deep.
Outside, I planted eucalypts and callistemon
asking them to pick through compacted soil.
Best of all has been my old friend Jean, across the road:
77 years, 3 dogs, 7 cats and a garden of rampant native trees
which she planted but can no longer see.
We share tea and ginger snaps;
she speaks of towns and husbands
strung out behind her, along an epic life.
She rents her house from distant off-spring;
she walks with her dogs, or alone to the bus-stop,
oddly dressed; and she wears trendy yellow sun-glasses
to aid her depth of field.
When I say hello she peers in fright before she smiles.
Her oldest dog is cancer-ridden
and has eyes like abraded glass,
but after thickly sniffing at your shoes
may struggle to raise a wag.
Jean grips three leashes and a big stick.
Caught out once by this errant bluey-cross
she stamped her stick and hissed,
"Don't you dare come near!"
She keeps her head down, otherwise.
At night, she sleeps out the back surrounded by her trees
and hears nothing of the local piston-heads
raging in machines against their state.
The cross bluey, alert to threat
examines me through wire.
At least one of us is caged.
I roll up the last rug;
I tuck it underarm.
I'm going now.
I hope my plants survive.
The neighbours may refer to me
by nodding past the next resident's shoulder
at the changes I've made,
saying, He never fitted in.
They'll say this over folded arms.
They'll offer beer, maybe:
"He went behind our backs; he called the cops;
but we spoke to him, as you and I are speaking now.
It's as if when we met him first
he had his fingers crossed."