Time of Death A yellow DEAD END sign opposite my home leans far right for suspicious reason and the street sign is missing as well; Publisher's Clearing House has its job cut out if it hopes to ever find me. red and blue soda machine hold-outs gleam in the sun outside storage lockers brimming with chotchkes of divorce and denied hoards bought for pennies on the dollar at dearly-departed auctions, and across the way a slab of concrete serves as marker for two gasoline pumps siphoned dry and carted off we dozen gathered for a public meeting in the lobby scheduled unsuitably on a weekday morning when they threatened to close the Post Office; the riled residents and the resigned posers like me were allowed our say-a mere formality- the decision to fell the ax already a done-deal remains of late 1800s commerce, their demode facades recorded in Mary Ladley's History of Hettick and a few inventive upstarts, to short-lived avail, rest in mingled memory a railroad once ran north to south here hauling White Hall crocks and pickles and prosperity, its valley of track-dent is still visible under one plot of sod; so many conveniences I would much enjoy taking for granted have all succumbed to circumstance and time efficiently calling this town's time of death. © Wanda Morrow Clevenger