The Meadow 113 hanging round after school. But in stores and driving by—guys with their jackets flapping, quick-heeled women, salesmen’s deals: here for this day only. Neighbors hang a look on me, nod recognition—off-hand greeting is custom here. So like each other, we’re in one another’s skin. About its fringe, the carmine sky wears a yellow strip like sealant fixing a bowl to a plate. Tight breeze between streets nips our shoulders. Winter not wholly done, for all we have blossom. Weather matters, in small towns hemmed with sand. In the hills, the skyward hills, it stays mid-afternoon: the lowered sun, its bloodied light anchors the town, or so I suppose. I don’t climb the hills. Down here, dust whips up, sticks on the air. Reach the corner and—despite familiarity—I’m impressed. What went, before the movie house? A varieties? Maybe a bar, when—years before—someone freighted a piano in blankets from wherever? The big screen freed everyone’s hands. Close to, white plaster crazed from dry wind, the dome that lends sacred gravity pitted from twisted junk flung in dust storms. Scorched from lightning folks recall like some recent collision. Sand from the last fire swills the walls. Looped and cursive neon tubes fizz as day damps down, promising each quiet life extraordinary glamour. Some nights everyone comes here. Some nights I sit with ghosts. Early show, all the doors but one still locked. I have no clue what anyone thinks they’re saving by keeping them locked. Dim lights on a rust-smeared carpet that retains shadowy monogram from the original grand name. Something here not found in the streets: alien voices, distant conditions. Green fields and blue oceans. Some come to make out, to hide from the weather. Some see a movie and leave town. I don’t ask what’s showing. If I’ve seen it before, I’ll laugh the same places, recoil the same places. Kneed my fingers silently through exposition. If it’s new, I’m alert for lines that get what I’m saying. Walk back through town, imported words in my
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