The old man sits
in a wooden chair
tilted back
against the red bricks of the post office.
I think he may
be a fossil,
one with the
cement below and the bricks behind.
Or maybe he’s a
Pinkerton for this museum
five blocks long
and tailing into hardpan at either end.
Someone needs to
keep an eye on memories
that blow like
wind jangling the metal hasp against the flagpole
next to the
grammar school that taught children,
how to be
farmers and secretaries
who could name
the first three presidents
and the planets when
Pluto was still in vogue.
The fossil
watches the Fourth of July parade,
ghosts of high
school strutters in sequined bathing suits,
all stutter-stepping
out of time to the boys,
their lungs not
big enough bellows
to produce the
holiday oompahs from the tubas
they wrestle
with, round, brass bells
twisting and
dipping because the band is overwhelmed
while batons
soar into the sky end over end
in a failed
attempt to escape small town life.
As for the students,
who would want to leave
the dry goods
store, the five and dime,
or the blinking
traffic light, forever amber,
that beats the
pulse of the town, pop. 426?
Tumbleweed rolls
down the street on cue
from an
invisible director shouting through a megaphone
to start the
scenes or cut them down to size.
High above, a
satellite looks over its shoulder
at the pulsar,
forever amber, spinning from the collapse
of all life, the
fusion of this Midwestern gem
having lost its
fuel a few decades before midnight.
The old man
rises from the chair and goes inside.
He is alive
after all.
Or maybe he is one
of many angels
who guard the
blinking graves of Main Streets
strewn
throughout the galaxies.
~William Hammett
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