Baker and not Brewer Be - edit

[dukealien]

edit;

I always like to see black families
in my development, a leavening
of some escaping downcast miseries
and others not, charmed in our gardened ring.

Without them we would sag, a doughy mass
of uniformly flabby flour-white bread
among our lawns of weeded, watered grass–
fat, sun-hatted against neck-rings of red.

Perhaps without enfolding dough their yeast
would just ferment and sour them down to death
in alcohol and Envy, green-eyed beast
that strangles every unselfconscious breath.

Or are such neighbors only counters showing
my tolerance?  Perhaps - there’s just no knowing.

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Thanks to @TranquilityBase for the precise critique - to me it was obvious all references to "them" traced back to the subject at the top of the poem, but it's not.  I was a programmer and read things oddly sometimes.   Changes made accordingly.