husband, parent, job, mind, limb,
businesses downtown, the lots
where sidewalks led to deadends
where nice old houses once had been.
One hot night, two girls walked down one,
then turned to look at the street as it must
have been seen from the porch back then.
Oh we shouldn’t do this, the older said,
it feels strange, and so they didn’t again.
Streetlights, headlights caught in the pebbles
in the concrete like lights in animals’ eyes,
in their eyes as they walked home.
Permissible: to speak of rain so long gone
fields burned where they stood
around the town. Because all knew, rain
would return, for sure, sooner or later.