This Town

This is a town of strange flavors.
Northern towns like this
never really rid themselves of winter.
Not in the heat or the humid thunder,
not in the calm chatter of crickets
where the night is carried away
by the soft, distant, hiss and moan
of never ending travelers
on the freeway. Rubber, asphalt, diesel
like never-ending waves caressing
a far off shore.

And the town
is only in respite from winter.
In the wee hours the launder-o-mat sleeps
in dim light behind dark glass,
and the streetlights and the night
feels ripe for robbery, though nothing
happens, save the odd possum or raccoon
caught in the headlights of a straggler
near a sewer grate; half-expecting
reports of a newly found body
in the morning paper, long after
the hazy moon has disappeared.