Sometimes Town by Richard Luftig

The sign announcing its name

as you enter says the population

is almost a thousand. If so,

then four hundred folks were on

vacation when the last census occurred.

But no matter. It still holds the title

of birthplace of that famous poet–

no matter that no one quite remembers

his name, and they claimed the guy

a full ten years before he was born.

This place where the only thing

growing is the number of once-farm

fields now reduced to bunch grass

and thistle, where winds out

of the northwest blow so hard

against this flat land that snow

moves sideways like it never intends

to touch the Earth. But you know

it does. Here, where people

take pride that three inches

can fall at midnight and by nine

in the morning there still won’t

be a single set of tire tracks

on the two-lane. Where the bet

of the day is whether the mail

truck will make it out to roads

named after families who live

here six generations after their ancestors

settled and broke the soil. This on-again,

off-again, sometimes town where we need

the noon farm report on the local radio

to remind us that we are still here,

and how folks who live in the houses

along the lone road that runs through

this town are more important than anything

that might ever take place at its end.