Good fences make good neighbors

All throughout school, I excelled when it came to English. Anything beyond long division makes me break out in a cold sweat, but composition? Grammar? Advanced placement classes were cakewalks for me. I am a well-rounded and avid reader, and I can write. One assignment, though, still haunts me to this day, and that is when I had to give an in-depth analysis of Robert Frost's Mending Wall. More than 25 years have passed, and I still clearly remember Mrs. Brown's red ink below the final paragraph: "What happened? You missed the point."

I think I've got it now. Possibly. And I think it came into focus during a random conversation in a bank parking lot. 

Here is the poem. It's helpful to refresh:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

(Note to my teenage self — it's not about stones! And it's not a simple allegory about bad vs. good.)

It is about boundaries. Tension. Fear. Tradition. Neighbors. And the hard work of living alongside neighbors we just cannot understand. 

Frost tells us that every spring two neighbors walk the line between their properties, repairing a stone wall that winter has damaged. The frozen earth pushed stones loose. Hunters have knocked sections down. Gaps have appeared in the wall. And every year, the neighbors gather the stones and rebuild. One of them questions the whole point of the wall. The other neighbor simply says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost never resolves the argument.

Maybe that's exactly why it speaks so clearly to this moment in American life. Because aren't we living among walls? Walls of political parties, walls of culture clash, walls of religion, walls of the media! Walls built with stones of fear. Walls built with stones of pain.Walls built with stones of legitimate differences and also imaginary threats.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”

He never tells us what the “something” is.

Maybe it's nature itself. Maybe it's human nature? Maybe it's the Spirit.

But Frost notices that something in the world resists permanent separation. The very earth itself pushes against the wall from beneath:

“That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it…”

The wall isn’t attacked from above. It's lifted from below. Doesn't that feel true in communities, too? Change rarely arrives only because someone shouts loudly enough. Often change rises up slowly from new generations and new experiences, being among new people and gaining new understandings. The ground shifts underneath us, and eventually the stones move.

But Frost also says:

“Hunters are another thing…”

Not all broken walls are signs of justice. Some damage comes from carelessness or opportunism. Sometimes people just enjoy tearing things apart. The difference matters.

Not every wall should stand, but not every fallen wall represents progress, either.

“But at spring mending-time we find them there.”

Spring mending-time. There's almost something sacred about that. The neighbors don't argue constantly. They don't live at the wall. But once a year, they come together intentionally for repair. And I wonder whether divided communities need things like that. Intentional times to reconnect, to listen, to work beside one another. Not coming together to try to erase differences, but to maintain relationship despite them.

“We keep the wall between us as we go.”

The wisdom! Tremendous wisdom.

They cooperate while remaining different. The wall doesn't disappear. Maybe one of the mistakes we sometimes make is assuming that community only exists where agreement exists.

“To each the boulders that have fallen to each.”

Each person handles the stones on their own side. More wisdom! We're responsible for our side of the wall. Our tone. Our assumptions. Our willingness — or unwillingness — to listen.

And that brings me to the bank parking lot.

Some months back, I was rushing to the bank just before closing time. An older man in a large pickup truck pulled in beside me. The truck had Trump bumper stickers plastered all across the back. He climbed out, looked at his sorry parking job, and joked that maybe we could stage a minor accident and split the insurance money.

I laughed.

Honestly, I had already made assumptions about him before we exchanged another word.

Then I noticed the Vietnam veteran cap he was wearing. I told him my father had served in Vietnam. Three tours. And suddenly the conversation changed. We talked for several minutes out there in the parking lot. Not about elections or the news. We talked about fathers and service and memory. About veterans getting together every week at a local diner.

Before we parted ways, he invited me to join them sometime. And I still think about that invitation.

Because I never went.

The bank door was closing, and I hurried inside just before they turned the key.

But I’ve wondered ever since what might have happened if I had sat down at that table. I don't remember the diner's name or where it is in Adams County. 

For a few moments in that parking lot, it didn't matter who either of us voted for. The wall that I assumed stood firmly between us suddenly had a gap in it. And standing there with him, I realized something uncomfortable: It's very easy to imagine ourselves as bridge-builders in theory. It's much harder to actually cross the bridge.

“He moves in darkness…”

“like an old-stone savage armed.”

And this is where the poem turns toward us. The speaker’s starting to sound just a tad uppity. That’s a warning for progressives.

Moral clarity is strong. Moral arrogance is brittle. If we want to bridge divides, we have to resist the temptation to see ourselves as more evolved. People feel that judgment immediately. It's difficult because many of us hold convictions way down in our bones, our marrow, and those convictions matter. Some walls absolutely should come down. Walls that dehumanize or exclude or protect cruelty or deny someone’s humanity — we shouldn't quietly stack those stones back into place.

Frost asks us to think about another possibility, too. Some walls aren't built from hatred, but from fear. Fear of what? Losing identity. Losing stability. Cultural change. Becoming voiceless.

And if we fail to understand the fears beneath the wall, we'll never understand why some people defend it so fiercely. The logic is flawed, but the fear is real.

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

He says it twice in the poem. Like a ritual. Like something he heard his elders say over and over again. The speaker questions it, but the neighbor trusts it.

And Frost never tells us which man is right. Maybe both are partly right.

Some walls protect peace, and some walls isolate us so completely that we stop seeing one another as human beings at all. We have to know the difference. It's hard work. Do we tear down this wall? Do we preserve that one? Is this wall about comfort or survival? Is this a moral emergency? Or a difference that can be carried?

Not easy questions. They become even harder when we're convinced that only the other side has blind spots.

When people feel that we see them as backward, primitive, or stupid, they stop listening. Period. The wall thickens.

And then everyone walks away believing the other side incapable of good faith.

But I keep thinking about that man in the bank parking lot. About how quickly the wall shifted once we spoke as just everyday people. Not Democrats or Republicans. Not progressives and conservatives. Not caricatures. Just two human beings carrying family stories and trying, in our own ways, to make sense of the world. And maybe that’s part of what Frost was trying to show us. The wall is real. The differences are real. But so is the yearly ritual of mending. So is the decision to show up.

The neighbors never fully agree. The wall never disappears. And still — they meet each spring. Still — they walk the line together. Still — they lift stones side by side. In a world where we're constantly plugged into outrage and certainty, maybe there's something holy in that. Not agreement or waving a white flag. Not abandoning your convictions, but refusing to let difference destroy all possibility of relationship.

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

There's no resolution, and there aren't any changed minds. No "win." Just tension.

What kind of people will we be while we stand next to these walls? Will we still choose, somehow, to meet one another there?

(It's too bad I can't teleport back to 1999 and submit a different analysis. I may not have it right yet, but I think I may be much closer.)