What Happens Here
Not much to speak of.
We live uncurious lives.
Let strangers pass through,
As quickly as possible.
Comingle when necessary,
Even with our own kind.
We see the glass of chance,
Neither half-full, nor half-empty—
Right in the middle seems fine.
Hardly anyone leaves town.
Ambition is frowned upon,
And we don’t choose to follow
Where it would take us.
We homeschool our children;
To each their own.
Once, there was a citizens’ bank,
But it closed long ago,
So each of us keeps spare money
Under the rectory of the church.
Yes, in God we most certainly trust.
We’ll die here, of course.
Lay down beside our Lord.
Give what remains to earth.
About the Author: Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press), and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023 (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “What’s left of a very old gas station in “downtown” Lula, Mississippi” (2016) Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 