Neighbors: A Poem

It has been years since we went to war,
since you planted your pear trees
and I dug in my garden
and the birds nested—
indiscriminate and lovely—
along our borderlands. Years,
so that we lost the war,
both of us,
and beauty took revenge.

Tonight, beneath the supposition
of a pearled moon,
in the absence of warning,
in the alley between us,
the last of our divisions
are howled away by wind.
My lit lamp
waiting for yours.