GOOD WALLS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

by Gil Hoy

  Last night I dreamed,  
workers painting my house

Brought all of their children
 to work in the morning

With brushes and buckets  
of water, to wash and to clean

To scrub and to scour
the faces,

Like paintings on canvas,

That had appeared overnight
on the walls of my house.

Black faces, white faces,
yellow, red and brown

Faces of every hue and tone,
every size and shape,

And the children all the while
washing and scrubbing

But never hurting the faces.

And me, all the while watching
the children hard at work.

And then, in my dream,
the parents and their children

Began to tear down the Wall
surrounding my house.

By the end of the day,
they had torn down every boulder

And every stone, torn down
the ground-swell beneath,

Until nothing remained of my wall
but green grass and brown earth.

And me, all the while watching
the families hard at work

With a growing sense of contentment

Coming from deep inside.

Gil Hoy is a Boston poet and trial lawyer who studied poetry at Boston University through its Evergreen program. Hoy received a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia

School of Law. He served as a Brookline, Massachusetts Selectman for four terms. Hoy’s poetry has appeared most recently in Chiron Review, Ariel Chart, Social Justice Poetry, Poetry24, Right Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, The Penmen Review, I am not a silent poet, TheNewVerse.News and Clark Street Review.