Small Thorns

The odor from garbage my neighbor
burns in a trash barrel corrupts
the fresh breath of morning and
I find the curtain of silence easily
torn at night by a barking dog, and 
my taste runs to birdsong early
Sunday morning rather than the blasts
from a neighbor’s lawn mower and
I have never subscribed to the steel
fences built to keep kids from
homesteading vacant lots. But we
neighbors know we must bear with
each other for it is the small thorns
that prick tempers and lame the feet
of good will. Yet no one, I repeat,
no one gives us directions of how
to change things as they are.