Country Flea Market
Outside a quaint town in fair Vermont,
by my family’s vacation home,
is a small field with fences and sign,
in the warm month’s it’s a place to go.
They have a flea market on weekends,
rows of tents pitched under mountains green,
for most people it is just old junk,
but it is fascinating to me.
There’s a tent that’s selling goat-milk soap,
I did not know that that was a thing,
the man behind it smells of hippie,
but not too much, since he’s still selling.
Next to him are magazines that
were new back in my grandfather's time,
postcards from before the depression,
so many that it boggles my mind.
Across from that, old iron housewares
from a century that is long past,
rough-hewn evoke memories
of a wholesome time that couldn’t last.
Besides that place, hand-turned wooden bowls,
from a shop the next county over,
their pretty, yes, with natural lines,
but at that price, I will say, “No sir!”
Then there’s the tent with all the old books,
dangerous place for men like myself,
it’s foretold I’ll pick up old novels,
but which ones? I can never foretell.
A guy is selling old comics books,
another is hawking baseball cards,
gaudy women’s clothes are over there,
near cheap tools and pieces of old cars.
There’s the guy with army-navy stuff,
yellowed manuals from World War II,
and more knives than you could ever need,
yet I still walk away with a few.
Of course there is the hot dog vendor,
with cheap prices you don’t find these days,
then a tent with essential oils,
I just roll my eyes and stay away.
Buy cheap bandanas for the nephews,
little guys will think that they’re so neat,
the I meander back to my car,
let the wheels take the stress off my feet.
Copyright ©
David Welch
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