In the winter, the ice builds up
on the north side of the street
and snow trucks, somehow,
manage to miss it... every
single time. Shop owners
armed to the denture with
cheap plastic snow shovels,
rock salt, and hot coffee
push the snow away from the door
as best they can, scrape and chip
away at the ice underneath –
all the result of several hundred
silent prayers by school age children
trying to avoid another math test
and the sour mood of a teacher
who is too underpaid
to afford four wheel drive.
In the Spring, the flower boxes do well
because even flowers need shade,
and the rain runs off and down to Carroll Street
unabated. Sometimes the rain comes so fast
both sides of the street look like
dueling tributaries fighting for the same river,
a sad amusement park ride
for the dirt and weeds and cigarette butts
stuck in the sidewalk cracks,
for critters so small our eyes don't see them,
eventually uncovering the unmarked graves
of stray cats left out to die the previous winter.
They wash away, too: the dead cats, the dirt,
the weeds, the cigarette butts, little chunks
of the sidewalk that avoided repair
because henpecked city work crews
couldn't get to them.
(This is not an age
where neighbors help
neighbors. This is an age
of paperwork – left behind
as the digital age takes
everywhere else. More
paperwork means more
industry, more to justify
some small town middle
manager's futile existence,
something to merit
that small plaque
placed in some ignored corner
of the old city hall building.)
The sunny side boils in the summer
and event he gadflies have sense enough
to stay away and loaf
on the shady side of the street. People
walk slow, clutch their purses and wallets
These times are tough, and the only
businesses that boom are the bars
at the bottom of the hill... the only
hiding places left. The talk on the bar stools
is the same on either side:
too much rain / too little rain
the price of corn /soy
machinery repairs / foreclosures
cynical whispers about
new businesses / new faces
lax school teachers / lazy parents
the President / the cost of milk.
In the Fall we all breathe a sigh of relief
at the break in the humidity
and the prospect of not having to mow the yard.
Night air cools. Days are warm.
And even storm cloud don't bother anyone.
This is the time of year
that makes people want to move back
to the Midwest, to the place of their birth,
to see the leaves and to loaf for no particular purpose
on the cozy stoop in front of the old barber shop
on the shady side of the street –
the one the old men used for that purpose
in that Once Upon A Time
time our grandparents used to
reminisce about and that we only
pretended to listen to
before we discovered the glory found
on a simple stoop, a cool spot on the sidewalk
in a town getting in its final stretch
before another long and buried winter.