Goffstown

Think of the town as a poem with

its web of roads taking you always

in and never out of town to New Boston,

Weare , Manchester or God knows beyond.

Think of the poem as a town that you

can roll out as a map from Glen Lake to

Parker Station, from Barnard’s to the circle.

And if there are dragons and serpents

which never existed in a grown-ups’ world

illuminated along the edges forgive them

as art or of a boy’s mind not yet full grown.

Think of the townsfolk as Greek chorus

of Katsekases, Karanikases, Branches,

Bagnalls, Carrs, Sinks, Daniels, Pierces,

and Yianakopoloses all humming as softly

as an evening’s breeze.  The Greeks

called poetry the master art and knew

that it was all that we could ever know.

Think of the town as a poem.

FG  7/3/2015

Poetry begins with the sound of names.  No idea (outside of the Greeks) why I picked these folks and not the Beebes, the Koniecznys, the Anslows, Salos or Morgrages.  It might be fun to make up law-firm sounding names of people in town in the early 60s like Backus, Stevens, Hamilton and Howe.  Each name carries with it a memory and if we forget the name, we forget the memory, too.