Midnight on the Town Square
Inspired by Marion Post Wolcott’s Snowy Night
A whisper can start a rumor.
You can look at a diamond ring
in the window of the jewelry shop
and half the town will wonder.
They were dancing in a narrow room
under the bookstore.
They spoke different languages
but the body provides a thin line of translation.
The snow drifted and fell again
around the street lamps,
where they walked inside an echo.
Unspoken desires
swirled under the light.
A snowdrift by the penny parking meter
became suspended in time.
The coins echoed in his memory.
The thin branches of trees
were shivering like her arms.
She almost remembers the sound of his voice
and the way he held her,
how she watched him lift the shawl
away from her shoulders
in the moonlight through her window.
She can still hear
a train echoing in the distance.
The touch of his fingertips,
the silk of her quilt before they entered a dream.
In a silver frame by her window,
you enter the photograph,
full of shiver and heat,
snow falling softly in an aura of light
around a row of street lamps.
— Diane Frank
