Small Town Lessons

This town is thin seams.

This town that harbored me in youth,

That I cannot live within, but would never soar without.

Is Ciardelli neon.

This town is a hard diner-coffee-late-shift hustle. Raised running through the streets of a small town firecracker where we don’t discuss those that got out because nobody gets out.

There are clouds forming that keep saints at bay and call wolves home. Storm door window get shattered and nobody gets out.

We live under the sole of America’s shoes. So see what this country stands on.

Every evening I stumble home, boots kicked off, undress, will permitting, climb in to a shower washing remnants of sand pit, tire tar off.

Memories of sand pits nestled deep in poison trees where I drank myself into adulthood. Playing witness to strap belt arms shooting up leftover foster care. Teenagers snorting home life off the frame of rusted bicycles.

It’s a wonder any survive long.                  

Yet we do.

We live in stride all the hard little significant happenings people here find renegade beauty in.

During the blackouts I would meander down to the swinging bridge of Milford, New Hampshire.

 Each step rattling metallic chords singing out a rushing river where suburban youth crews swam on roughest days.

 This is how we taught ourselves:

Wash troubled hands.

 Brace for current.

 Let it float.

All I can bear to tell you is this:

Your life is the thing of good poetry. A town bearing teeth is brim-full of raincloud beauties. Value is not determined by what you sell something away for. Always flirt existence through glimmering irises. Savor the fingertips of lovers who accepted you flawed and immaculately human.

Share your art, your words, your beloved stories and listen to those whose memoirs are etched glass windows.

  Be a sibling to alley cats. Release privacy reservations of shyness, plead mercy to highway signs distant, and you may find direction in living tender, aching and wild.

This poem is about: 
My family
My community
Our world

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