As I sat  beside the rough-

                                             barked apples, turning over last thoughts 

    At the small table in the last ebb of day, first one

And then the other of a nesting pair of herons

                                                                flew low from the lake shore,

Where they had been feeding

                                 the long day together in the flood tide,                                                                                                    

    And the blue grace notes of their flight toward

The fallen sun redeemed, it seemed, the hard

                                                  industrial clangour of the voices they followed home.