Tracing the steps of a dead
and nearly forgotten poet, the
writer wrote of the poet’s home-
town, “The main highway through
town is an anywhere drag of Super
8s, Hardee’s, Taco Bells, and
Sonics. There’s a megachurch on
the outskirts of town, its parking
lot as big as a Wal-Mart’s.” Mother
had lived in that town around the
time the almost forgotten poet did
before the town’s main drag was
anywhere U.S.A. with her second
husband who ducked out of Chicago
to fish the big lakes tucked be-
tween the Arkansas hills, but acc-
identally put the pedal to the
metal in reverse while putting his
boat in the icy spring water and
put the car in, too and mother
became a widow for the second,
sudden time. As in the wake of
the first fast death, she spent
considerable time in a mental hos-
pital coping and recuperating. My
wife and I drive through a lot of
same Main Streets with Wal-Mart,
McDonald’s, Motel 6 and, well, you
get the picture, going to and from
Michigan and Arizona. Because, the
town my now dead mother and the also
now dead poet lived in in Arkansas
had a nice Main Street back when she
lived there, when I go through all
the towns that look like what her
former town looks like today, I don’t
think of mother and her hard life or
that town. I just get depressed
looking at the towns I’m driving
through wondering, What town is
this?