I worked for roughly two years with a bi-weekly newspaper in a small, out-of-the way Southern Illinois town which seemed at times more like a place in the deep south than in Illinois (the mayor of the county seat often dressed for parades in a white western tuxedo, ala Boss Hogg on "The Dukes of Hazzard")and this is a view of a day in that town. It was printed in "Derivatives of Finn", a collection published last year by the Washington Township Library in Avon, Ind.

It's a hot and humid day
in a town and a square
buried off a two-lane
in Southern Illinois.

The sun bakes the
red-brick remains
of a business district
which went out by
the blacktop.

And everywhere you walk,
the oil wells leave their leftovers and even the concrete sweats
under the picnic house.

All over the town are
the graveyards of cars
and gas pumps and lives.
Ramblers and Studebakers,
Ashland and Speedy,
along with an old church float.

The willow trees lash
in the hot summer breeze
while the wasps and bees
hide around the village

A door's open at the laundry
and the barber
drinks coffee under every
walking cane ever made.

A little bit of Faulkner
in the Land of Lincoln