I live in a small city
where attempted murder
dominates the news for days,
where the highest voter turnouts
are for school board elections,
where John Deere stock prices
constitute the business news,
and where virtually anyone
can tell you the status of
the city's snow removal budget.
In the small city newspaper
the Daily Record lets us
know who has been arrested
for DWI or writing bad checks
or vandalizing mailboxes,
and the obituaries of our citizens
are full paragraphs with photos.
Among the octagenarians,
the nonegenarians, and the centenarians,
are men just 50 or so
who died of Natural Causes
or perhaps Heart Attack.
It seems not very natural
to die at such a young age.
And at the end of the obit,
or nestled between Survivors
and Services to be held at
are the words He was a
veteran of the Vietnam War.
C. Roberts 11/97©
