Moving to a Small Town

There aren’t any leprechauns here

            nor the northern woodland gnome,

no mythical creatures with horns or a genie

            in a lamp to grant us health and goodwill,

but there are ghosts here, thriving

            in the memories of the townfolk,

the names and places, people

            and shops on Main Street, long since gone,

that I will never know, never

            remember, but they haunt me

in my not knowing, failing this test

            of living here, required knowledge:

you remember Bob, and Gladys, lived

            up on the hill by Joe’s?

sure you do, ran the gas station;

            and the old post office, the general

store, and Leona’s restaurant next door?

            she made the best biscuits,

these ghosts of their past, haunting

            me, an outsider moving in.