Night in Wallace

The newlywed couple finds

A room in an old hotel

In the decrepit downtown

Of another one of those

Boom-bust western mining towns

That sprung up quick as mushrooms

In the westward expansion

Before settling down into

Generations of decay.

Having checked in, they wander

Around for something to eat,

Eventually strolling

Into a green neighborhood

Of slowly falling houses,

Eerily quiet, until

Fireworks start going off,

First as isolated pops

They half mistake for gunshots,

Then fizzing from a display

Being shot off on the hill.

They’d forgot it was the Fourth,

But now they happily perch

And cuddle on the cracked steps

Of what used to be a porch,

For the quarter-hour or so

Of gathering dusk it takes

For the small stockpile to go.

A few whoops drift from the hill.

A few more whizzes and bangs

Speckle the dim neighborhood.

It will be some years before

One of the pair, long after

The divorce, will run into

Some lines in another poem

Reminiscent of this one

Night in Wallace, Idaho—

There are sad, almost empty

Towns occasionally

Brightened by fireworks—

Which brings the memory back

Of a dusk not so much sad

As, for that night, contented.