I live in a town that lost its name 
like other towns just the same 
out of sight of the freeway lanes 
where wooden poles take lonesome aim
at painted clouds on broken plains. 
Oh, how many miles over the hills 
past the pitted blades of bent windmills 
and the rise and fall of oil drills
and trains that roll in close until 
they shake the screens of my window sill 
with a speed that says if looks could kill 
then shoot right through Nowheresville.

When I look around all I see 
is everything that used to be—
boarded shops in the evening pink,
bats in the rafters at the roller rink,
the cyanide where the mine went bust,
the poisoned river, the broken trust,
the lawsuits that weren’t big enough,
the rich who left the worst for us.
Hard goodbyes, the killer pills
the absence of the whippoorwills—
it all hangs in Nowheresville

Bridge:
There’s a bottle cap 
at one end of my street
and a star at the other
where the hills retreat
and the reach they cast 
is the width of a blast
when the dreams 
of a whole town 
explode. 

My father owned the IGA. 
I worked with him to make my pay. 
Kindness was his bailiwick
til our business failed and he got sick.
I’m working now like others here 
driving north near Belvedere
bussing tables until I’m sore
mopping up Sam Walton’s floors
drinking heavy at my back door
waiting on the answer for.

How I recall Saint Joe’s hill
standing in that starry chill
with my dad who said, What a thrill
to bring your dreams up here to fill,
so long ago, I feel it still
before I lived in Nowheresville.

Photo: Tom Fisk | Pexels.com