Small Town Education

Growing up in a small town
We learn
 Everything
About our neighbors.

It begins on the first day of school.
Sitting in little desks, learning
How to spell cat,
Add two and two, and
Who wears hand me downs
What is packed in lunch boxes,
Who
 Has head lice
Or wets their pants

We see each other at  all of the one-shot
Necessities  in town
Gas station
Grocery store, pharmacy,
Town dump

Early on, we understand the meaning
Of the make and age of a car,
Contents of a grocery cart
Or
Bottles discarded
Or furniture or toys
Scavenged from
Saturday morning
Trash.

By the time we pick teams
For field hockey
Or lean against the bleachers
Trying to act sexy and casual
At junior high dances
We know who
Is who.

There is a progression
From seeing,
To reading meaning
Into the details,
To the all-important decision
Of what to do with the knowledge.

Here where there are less than
Four thousand of us
Selling gas and groceries,
Cutting hair, cleaning houses,
Cooking at the diner,
Fixing each other's broken stuff,
We need one another
Too much
To isolate ourselves in
 Embarrassment or judgment

Gated communities
Only work
Where you didn't go through acne, school lunch
Bus rides to ball games
And crushes on the same girl
With the cleaning crew
And guard

We know our neighbors'
Food and drink
Love and fear
Only as well as they know our own

And are too exposed
To throw mud
Unless we are willing
To get showered equally in wet
Common
Earth