Home Fires Burning
Boxford:
Home to the upper crust
of that pie in the sky.
A posh, zoned to perfection
bedroom-eyed community
inhabited by, near-do-nothing
princes of the paper-pushing marketplace
proponents of all-off-shoring
and sole customers of every service industry
at which you now work.
They are the insurance agents for everything, except:
Joblessness
homelessness
and selfishness.
Self-righteous, self-appointed
Guardian Angels
of the sub–urban way.
Self-centered owners of high fences
neighborly folks, who
while an elderly man’s home
burned to the ground
never noticed.
His was a humble, tumble-in cottage
far from the center of town
and outside the inner circle of Main Street.
It was off the central artery
at the end of a lonely, private road
and difficult to see, for it was overwhelmed
by a large adjacent barn
property of the “prime” estate.
Like a moon of Jupiter
his home was seldom seen
never visited
and hardly an attraction
to those of social value
which, according to their mirrors
was just about everyone in town.
This elderly man lay there
puffing, what was to be his final cigarette
maybe, recalling, when this was a farming community:
How the “bullshit” in the air
was carried by wind and not words
how women went to town to purchase candles
not to get a waxing.
and how men with dirty hands
would shake them, when they met.