David Galef

The Local Museum

A retired man at the desk, reading The Sentinel,
charges two dollars for a blurred brochure.
Faded placards under dust-clouded glass
showcase arrowheads, old coins, obsolete farm tools.
The Civil War carbine, long as a pikestaff,
rests on two hooks. Four and a half rooms of that.
The town [insert name] was founded in 1813,
when life was simpler or duller,
or richer in some ways while poorer in others,
a half-effaced patch between this date and that,
now a moth-eaten cloak on a hook,
displaying what once meant something to us,
till the display itself is what remains,
though this past is disconnected, defunct,
leading nowhere except outside again, in the rain,
the drip-drop of here and now.
None of this matters, or all of it does.