Winchendeon

The bus rocks gently into some town
at 5 p.m. I sort of look at the houses and stores
the way you do from a bus just passing through;
happen to notice
                             a paperboy and his pal
in small-town America
on a forgettable side street back of the hardware store
down from the brick Methodist church -
the friend wobbling his bicycle to go slow,
the paperboy fiddling with the red strap on his sack of
evening news . . .

What evening news could there be? In Winchendon . . .
The bus thrums and I'm so okay on it.
The bus thrums and I'm thinking Winesburg, Ohio,
while in Winchendon the paperboy and friend are
already way out of sight,
                                          discussing a girl named
Mary Jane,
daughter of Ned of Ned's Used Cars and Parts,
how she says one thing and means the other;
the paperboy thinking of her hair as beauty itself,
conscious that he can't explain this logically.

Up by Ned's, near where some twenty Holsteins
graze stolidly all facing away from the highway,
there's a sign BLIND PERSON
                                                and I think "That's me"
and the bus thrums
into gathering dusk
and I ride thinking "gathering dusk"
away from all that other life I meant to think of
in Winchendon:
methods of local survivors -
who's making peanut waffles for dinner,
who's playing Patience over the oil-rag wilderness of the garage
who's singing "Hit the Road, Jack"
and who's walking fast out to the darkening Common
in the hopes of some personal and effective encounter.

***

by Mark Halliday

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