Stop Sign’s Pause

Outhouse on stilts, squatting over bracken
cat-tails for fenders and blackberry
an old rail line seldom used, hovering tourists
just a block to the ice cream shoppe!

There were old basins and feather beds,
doors with hinges starved for oil and unused lanterns
piles of newspapers, magazines in boxes
in a bucket used for bathing children.

Old hardware store has gone kitsch,
church steeple a landmark bed and breakfast,
that old snake lake is passed by on casino runs
and the living water bubbling
is only heard in the summer
when the horns at stop signs pause.