View From Here Poem by Sheena Blackhall

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Burglars sniffed round their premises
Like opportunist mongrels
Fear raised the alarm, now screwed into the wall
The security camera stares with its myopic eye

Rising plank by plank from the grass
The fence grows high and higher
Casts darker shadows

A bag of joiner's tools
Power saw, plane and hammer
The bag is stuffed ad nauseam
Like a Roman at Caesar's feast
Sprawled on a bench

It replaces a massive sycamore
Whose seeds whirled to the ground
Quick as the years of childhood
Quick as the days we flew the blue-winged kite

Rising plank by plank from the grass
The fence grows high and higher
Casts darker shadows

For weeks we heard the tapping of a hammer
The grinding of cement, mixed in a drum
The screeching drill that broke the past asunder
Raising a self made ghetto
In an adopted land

The birds of the air make lighter work of the barrier