Evening on A Village Street

The sun flings lengthening shadows through the trees
That green the village street. They come to life,
The houses that have seemed to sleep all day.

The evening meal is over, dishes done,
And prim, trim women sit and rock and knit
Upon the porches, read the village news
Recorded in the paper, out today,
Or move about the yards to give their plants
Their evening watering, or chat across the hedge
With friendly neighbors on the other side,
Or swap rose-cuttings and geranium slips.

The men, shirt-sleeved, walk leisurely behind
Their lawn-mowers, or rake and sweep their paths,
Or tie their vines up to their trellises--
Small, pleasant tasks, with which they rest themselves
At evening, when their day of work is done.

The children call and shout there in the street,
Or play hide-and-seed from yard to yard.
And arm in arm young lovers stroll in pairs,
Bound for the moving-pictures in the square.

The sun has dropped, now, low, behind the hill--
The high, blue hill that rises to the west.
The dark leaps on; high up, a sudden star
Blooms out like some pale flower; a thin, young moon 
Hangs like a silver string caught in the trees,
And in the houses lights begin to glow.

Here on the street another day is done--
So like the last day and the coming one--
So like this street to other village streets!
And yet the total of such days is -- Life,
The sum of streets like this -- America!

--Roselle Mercier Montgomery

Located at Alexander and Commerce Streets across from the courthouse in Crawfordville, Georgia

GHM 131-17, 1956