This Old Town

Dry winds have sanded
This old town
For a century.
It stirs and whips dust and sand
Wearing the bright
Red star
On the Texaco sign
Into faded pink.

Limestone markers

In the church cemetery
Blunt into unreadable inscriptions
Dissolving all memory
Of those who once turned
Their shoulders to that same wind.

Main Streets' store windows

Are marred with remnants of tape
Once posting signs
Advertising pork chops
Wide-track tires
And garden hoes.
They are as opaque
As the cataracts of those
Who, as children

Once gazed through them at Christmas

Dreaming of bicycles and baseballs.

The old dance hall is now a pawn shop.
The Palace Theater is reframed
As a martial arts academy
And Western Auto was razed after the fire
With nothing taking its place
Between the Rexall and Post Office.

This old town

Sanded by wind and time
Breathes slowly
So slowly
Exhaling memory and dust
As life expands around her
While concrete crumbles
Lumber warps
Paint chips
And people leave or die.

 

But doesn’t the wind blow forever.