In a Little Town of Magic

All you hear in little towns is talk 

Talk of schools 

Talk of children 

Talk of babies 

Talk of marriage 

Talk of spirits 

They talk of houses on hills whose owners never left 

They talk of children in the sprawling forests 

They talk of women at the ocean’s edge, sitting on black and gray stones 

They talk of sudden rainy nights no one saw before they started 

They talk of somber women seen in windows in dresses decades lost 

They talk of lights that flicker in the night 

And they talk of poets always writing to themselves, their noses in their notebooks and their fingertips stained black