on the way out of town

here where every woman has a child cradled in a sash slung around her torso.
here where grown men dress like children.* all carrying cloth bags full of carrots and peaches back to their small quiet homes. the lonesome, the soft-eyed, the bowlegged.
practitioners of spiritual calisthenics.
here where everyone is an artist & righteous. glass jars & bicycles. bread & coffee, candy, kale, & rhubarb. salt & metal in the groundwater, babies in the sink stinking of iron.
here where they speak about the heart. the tides. moral fitness. expansion, spaciousness.
the importance of being right and clean of conscience, money in violin cases, lost teeth & tractors, & what sleeps in the hills, always what sleeps in the hills.