Small Towns Between

The town fathers are long neglected by scavenging vultures, locked up as they are, in the wood cabin, we call the town museum. Inside the shack, there are old tintypes, sepia photographs and the usual rural relics. Outside, a small patch of lawn divides the past from a main road, one that bridges our hamlet between two swelling and brawling cities. Those cities also have their metropolitan relics, grand achievements forever displayed for groups of bored schoolchildren. Outside, vultures are shood away by men in HazMat suits. Our community fathers are black-suited grim featured farmers and church dignitaries, even the mayors that are still alive look out from their portraits as if wishing for the odd vulture or two. Nothing else around here bothers enough to matter much. Fields are pushed back beyond backyards. We killed off all the rattlesnakes years ago.