How A Town Dies

I left my tent pegs
secured to the ground, long
past the time when
Woolworths and Parke Snow's, closed
their doors on Main Street, along
with every other store
that shut down the road for a day
each summer
for the Old Fashioned Bargain Days carnival.

Parades just kept rolling on
and forgot to stop and come back.

The wood roller coaster was torn down
and so was the drive in screen.

Trains took different tracks and Victorian mansions
sighed their last breaths
in a show of peeling paint.

Even the bees left
when a solar field kicked out
the apple orchard, and
they took the scent of lilacs with them.

I have all the pictures.
the black and whites
of captured time, and
sometimes I flip through
the albums and remember--
how it was when we rode in the back
of an open pick up truck
to the city pool.

I thought I could last
and keep it all alive , and
I did, much longer than most .

But I, too, have given up
though it still lives in my heart, and
I tend the cemetery one final time
before I drive away
and don't look back.