"Hunt & Behrens, Petaluma" by Fred Davis is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Birds boomerang above the tin spires
of the empty granary.
Its stacks are ringed with rust.
Its threadbare sheds stand hollow, doors open,
framing the weedy lot beyond.
No one has hauled grain from here in decades.
Ruined barns shy from the roadside,
split sides knitted together with spiderwebs,
spines broken and piled with mouldering straw and leaves.
Livestock would turn from them for fear of collapse.
Freight trucks gather in the darkness just off 101,
wheels nestling into gravel,
headlights winking out two by two.
Sleep, coffee, Grand Slam breakfast and harder things:
all these stave off white-line fever.
Past these graveyards and pit stops
flows the wide river,
carrying gravel barges, passenger ferries, rumors
of capsized pleasure boats.
The town's dead sit quietly, unburied,
as the earth slowly welcomes them back.