In the Mill Towns of New England

Ghosts stand at dusk
On the platform close to the tracks
Waiting, as if the world runs on time.
They know no other place to go.
From cracked tar weeds tough as leather
Riveted years ago in those brick
Buildings that lean close
To the river rattle like the bones 
Of the dead in a cutting wind:

The river like a woman
Widowed early: a beauty
Now gaunt and thin, heart
Gray as the broken stones that line
The banks below;

Trains no longer stop,
Winding their way
Through the valley 
Like a snake slipping skin.  

Some still remember
The moneyed days of machinery,
Their eyes now like broken
Windows the pigeons enter
Into the darkness of long and dirty halls,
Heavy timbered floors white
With shit and the footprints
Of the lost.

Some believe the wind
Is a keening, ghost-songs that echo
In the lonely ruins when night
Rises, and long after, the old men
In Cleghorn sit suddenly upright
In their beds trying to remember
The dark road of promise
That disappeared.

Some insist that memory
Is a foolish drunk slumped
Over his beer at the smoky bar
Hours after the quitting whistle
Made him penniless, weeping
Softly into the ear of anyone
Who might listen.

Some,
Some believe in nothing.