Letter Carrier

Dec 26 2019

The temporary letter carrier

filling in for the holidays

has been leaving the neighbour's mail 
in my box.

So every day, I trudge next door

and unobtrusively deposit it

in its rightful spot,

dropping the lid quietly

and anxiously eyeing the door

to be sure no one's home.

Yes, we've been known to exchange polite hellos

coming and going

mowing the lawn.

He's even retrieved my empty trash cans

when they were left too long at the curb,

while I've accepted packages

when he was at work.

But there are limits to neighbourliness

in the private lives

of busy grown-ups.

There is only so much small talk

we have to give,

so many strained smiles

nods of acknowledgement.

A New Year's handshake, perhaps,

an enthusiastic Nice!

over his brand new car.

Mostly bills, some Christmas cards.

But for me, no mail all week.

So either I'm off Santa's list

(which wouldn't be a surprise)

or there are neighbours worse than me

on this proper suburban street

of drawn blinds

and well-manicured lawns.

Where, in the thin light of winter

near the end of a year

that could have used a little more good cheer

we exchange pleasantries

co-exist peacefully

and continue to live together

apart.

“Living together apart” (which is also know by the acronym LAT) is a new variation on marriage: couples who have long term committed relationships, but live in separate houses. I've borrowed it for this poem.

I originally had the final word as “alone”, not “apart”; and indeed, the experts tell us there is an epidemic of loneliness in society today. But I thought that was too strong a word, and it would serve the poem better if I left the reader free to make that inference herself.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing original in writing about suburban alienation. But cliche or not, that doesn't make it any less true or salient. (Actually, more true when it comes to an introvert and homebody like me. After all, I would probably be no less insular if the neighbourhood was instead full of outgoing street-partying and hail-fellow-well-met bon vivants!) I think if the poem works – even if it's not saying anything that hasn't been said before – it's because it doesn't moralize or hector. Rather, it works because it's tone is self-reflective and self-critical, not holier-than-thou; and because it takes as its subject something small and everyday, not big and pretentious. ...Although perhaps suburban “alienation” over-states it. Maybe this is more of a nostalgic lament for a kind of Norman Rockwell-ish neighbourliness that may have never in fact existed. When I was a kid, for example, we weren't any more friendly or involved with our real-life next door neighbours – who actually were the Joneses (talk about cliches!) – than I am now with the people next door.

(In case anyone is fact-checking this poem, my house is actually in the city, not the suburbs. But it's a small spread-out sort of city with a low-rise “downtown”, the kind in which the residential areas might as well be suburban – a low density car-centric place, and hardly cosmopolitan in the way that “city” implies.)