The next time a truck impresses 27
startled pedestrians with its ability
to stop on a dime, and cabbies with trace amounts
of English and shattered sensibilities
complain with the indiscriminate honking of horns,
think of a town where you can step down from the train
to a Main Street from another century.

True, owning a home here does mean mastering
the lost logic of plumbing lines in old houses,
toilets that speak like run-on sentences,
how to heat a house without burning it down.
It means learning to love your neighbor’s leaf blower
and his son’s guitar (Is that a rock band or an earthquake?)
and their dog, a Serbian Mountain Climbing Pest.

But having fought the good fight yet another day–
the sump pump of politics, the tyranny of magnates,
the price elasticity of trouble–can any
other place compare when it’s time to come home?