Main Street Migraine



Truck tires suckle at the slick wet street

A heavy engine thunders between houses

A juggernaut, battering down the silence,

Making a boiler room of Main Street.



Two pipes spew acrid floating poison ghosts

That threaten bedroom window panes

With curling, twisting fingers of blue mist.



But in an interval between ponderous steel invasions

Time is kept by sounds of raindropws

Streaming off porch rooves in twinkling beaded curtains,

Splashing down in mud goblets lined along the hedge,

Ploppin in rhythm like popcorn kernels

Popping in oiled pots.



Behind this curtain of wet light I slouch,

Enveloped in the heavy musk of my Salvation Army couch.

Puzzling at a flat gray dropcloth, hung for sky

Behind this western movie storefront town.



In the still quiet of the truck armistice,

Waves on street puddles carry beads of light

From twinkling curtains, in concentric circles,

Streaming out from the curb, across the thin wet film

Like theater crowds at intermission,

Until the next barrage of volcanic rumbling beasts

Tramples them to death.