Sultry Morning: Rural

The screech of table-saw; the scream

of children swinging; mourning doves:

all flotsam on the sluggish stream

of doubts and deeds, of hates and loves.

Old passion like a furry bat,

half blind by day, hangs upside down

and views a world where This and That

sense something shut and shaggy brown

upon the cornice, spying out,

and half-ashamed their work commence.

'Twixt hate and love, 'twixt deed and doubt,

they build the barn and mend the fence.