My journey took me to
a place called Hopper
and the last gas station in America
that was owned by an actual human being.
A windblown flag read “Ernie’s,”
though that owner’s actual name
was John, just like mine.
Oh well…there’s actual and there’s actual.
In the window of his tiny office
was an old rusty sign
for a brand of gas and oil called “White Eagle.”
I took a photograph to save its future.

I must admit the drive-in restaurant
was a disappointment.
Sure I could park my car
and revel in a waitress on roller skates
taking my order.
But the building itself was a pink and blue replica.
And the vehicles, like mine,
weren’t born when America was in the 1950s.
Good thick shake though.

I was too late for the Main Street Cinema.
I could only stand outside, peer in and imagine.
The poster on its wall
was for the first Spiderman movie.
And the concessionaire stand
was as barren as the landscape
that framed the forgotten town.

The diner was still in business.
And so was the hardware store.
I saw nobody in the streets under fifty.
And every bench was filled with those
who knew this place in better times.

I stopped in the park, rested on the brown grass,
in company with a statue
that was dedicated to the Hopper war dead.
Most of them were buried in a graveyard
halfway up a nearby hillside.
They too knew this place in better times.