THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

It’s housed in the museum of the skull
where the reruns loop endlessly like
old Twilight Zone episodes
shuffled into the pages of
To Kill a Mockingbird-- 

the Andy and Opie Main Street
Webber Hardware, Merrick Square Market,
Center Theatre and Lanpher’s Rexall Drug
the church, county jail, and parsonage
the school playground with its slide and swings 

and the dark dead house on School Street
shunned and haunted by its urban legends--
the neighborhood with its cast of usual suspects
the characters who strolled on through
your forever-unlocked doors: the milkman 

and iceman in the kitchen, the postman
and paperboy in the hallway, the bedside
doctor who felt your forehead, the sleazy
insurance agent in the white Panama hat
who’d just pop in without knocking to help 

himself to his premium envelope hanging right
there on the kitchen wall-hook with the house keys...
and down the street, our own resident ‘Boo Radley,’
and the wizened old crone who berated you
from her witch’s porch wicker rocker because 

you were guilty of being young and
she knew your name and more about
your father than you ever would…
that gossip who tapped into everything
you ever whispered over your five-party line… 

the neighborhood…
just a footnote now…

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