These are the days of tardy fireworks
spitting and popping, ripping the sky above the beach,
flashing grandstands at the deserted stadium,

or dud-thunking onto neighborhood pavement
to the puzzlement of curious dogs and children.
Meanwhile sparklers fizz on porches, being used up

weeks after the Fourth of July came and went,
like so many holidays we can't seem to let go of,
Christmas boxes piled in the corner for months,

Easter candy hardening in drawers, and it's all
of a piece with books unread on shelves for years,
dresses you'll never fit into again in this life,

stray keys in cups, high school yearbooks 
packed away somewhere, or possibly lost,
completely consumed by the mice of time

in an attic you must have set foot in sometime,
for how else did your report cards get there,
your dead dog's leash, the broken knife

you brought home from Scout camp
and never looked at again, as far as you recall.
                        

Yes, light starts slipping away today,
but Lord, preserve me from big ideas. 
Let me stay local all my days. 

Today I want to pick up pennies 
from the sidewalk, write a friend 
I haven't seen in forty years, and 

tell her my plans for the day. Nothing.
If there's time, I want to look long into 
my dog's face before leaving the house.

And here’s a thought: let’s not read 
the newspaper for once. See if the world
wobbles on its axis. I may just drive to 

the coast and back just to see if she 
had a vision or I had a vision, or if 
at least there's still anything great 

on the radio in America. Does my 
friend remember the night we went 
rollerskating on the solstice and felt 

so old, forty-five years ago, teetering 
and careening from ice cream vendor 
to park bench—collapsing there laughing?

And do we both still feel shaky on our feet?
                        

Resolved, That even the lowliest burgs all boast 
a fine history and two-color brochure of renewal;
That you can't ever stroll some farmer's pasture

without treading ground of the last battlefield
of the Revolution, or childhood home of robber baron 
or suffragist; That the human spirit so hungers 

for renown it will bake the world's largest cookie
on an improvised miracle of sheet metal and gas jets,
or lift toward heaven the planet's grandest chair,

bragging of the President who fled decades ago
from these hallowed bean fields, this civic bandstand;
That none of this truly matters when sun strikes down 

the Welcome sign, erasing our whole population 
with one surge of light; That the opera hall next to 
the old A & P is architecturally unique and must be 

preserved before it slides like a bonfire into its own past;
That if we could just fill the boarded stores downtown
then surely the tourist trickle would river wide

all summer, all winter—drawn as our grandparents were
to this motley paradise, where the oldest, smallest,
deepest, and strangest abide. Our famous church.

That gargantuan hat. This tale polished to perfection.