Property Line - Sept 27 2025

 

Property Line

Sept 27 2025

I have lived here long enough

that the grade schooler next door

represents the 4th generation 

to pass my way.

I suppose it’s odd

in such a peripatetic world

to have been settled so long.

For enough decades 

to find my role reversed;

for the charming old couple

who were once my quiet neighbours

to have turned into me.

Even though I don’t feel as old

as I took them to be

But feeling doesn’t count

once you’ve crossed the line 

between athletic and spry,

easy-on-the-eyes

and distinguished.

No secrets

when your beard is white and hair sparse.

Little separates us

in this old neighbourhood 

of modest homes

on 50 foot lots.

So we wave, coming and going

our dogs congenially bark.

Affable, but not chummy;

which suits my temperament

in this land of perpetual winter.

I nod through the kitchen window

as the pony-tailed mom

smiles brightly back.

Whom I remember as a newborn

in her own mother’s arms,

who herself was once a teen

sunbathing in the yard

when I was too shy to say hello.

I think how memory fades

impressions are ephemeral.

Will that young boy think of me, someday

as I do his grandparents,

whose faces have blurred

like badly focused Polaroids,

and whose good English names 

I struggle to recall?

So neighbours, but not too neighbourly.

A culture

that even on 50 foot lots

keeps its distance

and respects the other’s privacy.

Where property lines

need not be seen

to be observed.

An example of a very Canadian sort of propriety and temperance. Hardly the culture of the south, where life is loud, communal relationships matter, and people live much of life out in public in shared spaces.

But it's also very much me: introverted, restrained, standoffish. (And terrible with names!)

All-in-all, an unusual circumstance in this day and age, when people move frequently, jobs are impermanent, and change happens too fast for comfort: a house handed down through 4 successive generations (that is, it will be 4 if the young lad stays true to form); and me, content to stay in one place. Even my phone number hasn’t changed in 40 years!

(In the interest of full disclosure, their dogs are more yappy than congenial, and mine aren’t barkers. But never mind. Poetic licence!)