In a Small Town

by ..

Theresa Moritz

 

Here the shoppers leave their faces
waiting in the cars outside the milk store
and their unoccupied eyes support us
across the palsied landscape.

Dust is falling into the water tower.
Unconcerned, police cruisers take the sun
beside the railroad tracks. The mannequins
are last to leave the vacant store for jobs
at a rummage sale

on the concrete stoop of a mobile home.
Praying in the parking lot,
children in baseball caps watch us
turn the car around. They want to ask
where our passenger got out, and how long
he will be in coming. The train conductor
will diminish with his goodbyes, but the road
widens from here
until it spans the earth’s distant curve.