May

In the cool evenings of May

Are when the ramshackle homes

Open more and more each day

In preparation for the dew of the morning:

To soak it in, expand, decay,

To wonder of the hands that built them

And why they went away,

Never to return again to fix them

Or paint them shades of gray

Or patch the hole in the many roofs

That line the sleepy old town

In the month of May.