Zona Libre

It is the houses that are the neighbors,  
they tap each other when in need.
When there was a fire down the road,  
one house nudged the other awake,  
husbands tumbled out, stood, side by side,  
flashlights in hands, faces, highlighted  
by fire, drawn with a wordless worry.
 
In the city, they ask, “on whose land  
does the fence stand?” Here, it does not matter,  
here they do not ask about inches of turf,
in towns where the old come out with brooms,  
to talk with others holding brooms,  
sweep up leaves and then watch them burn
till embers become fireflies at dusk.

Just before noon, someone from one house  
scurries to the fence to deliver a viand,  
it is one in a series of reprisals,  
they do not know how it started,  
by whom, and it does not matter.
 
It is zona libre, they blacken nostrils  
with each other’s burnt offerings,
one man’s dog’s bark is the other’s as well,
when the bats clumsily harass the fruit  
of the star apple trees, they do not ask,
"whose trees are these?" It does not matter.  
 
Both houses listen to one son’s learning  
to drum, he is the other’s son as well.
One house asks about the other’s daughter,  
now grown to that age fathers fear.
 
The bonds between homes make them one,
the glue is fish and clams, sons on drum sets
and wooed daughters, where one man’s wall ends
and the other’s begins is knowledge owned  
by the mold and the darkening concrete.