The 30/30 Poetry Facebook prompt was “empty storefronts.”
Main Street
Once this was the place you wanted
to be, where gloved ladies met for lunch
and shopping, shoes and pocketbooks
tastefully matched to clean-cut
dresses. Shopkeepers waited
on all customers as a matter of course,
keen eyes tracking and shaping
national trends and their local
manifestations. Generations of youth
were fitted for first suits and first bras
and shoes for first communions
and bar mitzvahs, then proms and balls,
weddings and job interviews. Now
a soup kitchen and a pool hall anchor
three blocks of windows lined with faded
butcher paper and “For Lease” signs
while leaves and old newspaper gather
in the recessed doorways.
yellow magnolia from my yard
The Daily Compost 