Private - See? [Edit 2]

[dukealien]

Edit1

From altitude, each new-built suburb looks
Quite different.  In the vistas of its streets,
Viewed from the ground, McMansions crowd like books
On bookshelf-roads, beyond which eyesight meets
Brick walls, a man-made lake or leafy wood.
Developments seem closed, each one a cell
Which no one’s gated yet, but surely could
Self-seal hermetically if darkness fell.
Yet, bird’s-eye viewed, stark borders that concealed -
Walls climbable, lakes raftable, thin belts
Of trees that seemed deep forest - lie revealed
As social follies:  separation melts.
    How simple, if all trust in what they see,
    To slake the house-proud lust for privacy.

Many thanks to @Erthona and @Akira for their good critiques.

@Akira - I've altered "from high up" to make the flight level and non-political nature apparent - good catch.  The confusion you mention results, I think, from conflating privacy with security:  my project is the illusion of both.

@Erthona -  Taking your valuable critiques more or less in order...

"[D]ifferent" as two syllables is how I pronounce it, so I plead dialect.  For a while I was using apostrophes to command-and-control readers' pronunciation, but the work ends up looking as if it had been shotgunned.  Besides, the reader must be trusted... and you didn't complain about "hermetically" as two iambs   .

I've done some smoothing (including your favorite line, sharpening the sense a bit).  Your take from it is deeper than mine when I wrote it.

Defense of "concealed:"  What's prologue is past - as you're reading this line, the grammatic clock has ticked since you thought about the concealment.   (Changed the cliche ("stand revealed") to something more supine since viewed from above, but couldn't manage to change the A rhyme.)

Oliver Cromwell was against giving the vote to such as have no possessions to lose ("one who has nought but that hee can carry on his backe" [Putney Debates]), ignoring the fact that this described most of his own New Model Army.  I think you should have a vote anway, particularly in matters poetic, and thank you for yours. ><

Paul,

Hmm, a sonnet? Not on L2 

Quite dif-fer-ent.  In the vis-tas of its streets,

However the rest is fine, although the "As artful follies:  separation melts." Comes off as a bit difficult, although technically correct.

L9 " concealed"  there seems no justification for past tense here.

Personally I thought that L8 was a very good line:

"Be sealed hermetically if darkness fell."

and that darkness could refer to a number of things and although you may not have meant it, hermetically sealed alludes to the Egyptians and the jars that accompanied the important dead (mummies) on their journey in the heaven boat to the after life. So to me it connotes that these people are sealing themselves inside their homes(?) in a death-like state.

Of course there is a simply way to avoid needing all of this protection, just do like I do, possess nothing worth taking. 

Anyway enough frivolity, I scanned your poem and except where noted it is technically sound, but there are myriad places that lack smoothness. I would point them out, but I think you know them already, and I have no solutions to offer. Overall the writing is clear and so is the writer's intent.

Best,

dale