CEDARBURG

I should write a poem about this rain here

in Cedarburg where time is preserved in

antique shops and woolen goods, nostalgic

hideaways like this bed and breakfast where

time is arrested, where you can return

to the old values, the old ways, where craft

and truth blend in the great loom to form 

a single vision before the Great Disruption

tore our lives to shreds.  At breakfast we

gather in the dining room before the hearth

and the spread of peaches, a basket of bread,

crockeries of cream and pistachio pound cake,

crocheted place mats and oatmeal with maple

syrup.  We gather after a night's blessed and

sinless sleep in pencil post beds: the pregnant

woman, immense in her imminence, ignored

by her husband and the rest of us, she swells

in her radiance.  The women Harley riders

seeking to cleanse themselves of something they

do not know the source of, the couple from 

Illinois staring out the windows at the rain,

wistful, they'd made plans to buy scented candles 

and handcrafted silver jewelry, and now 

it's cold and raining, and, what's worse, "It's really 

a wet rain!" one of them declares, while I eat 

my peaches and pistachio bread.  

We have all gathered here to what?  

To stare out the distorted glass--the old 

wavy glass!--at time itself, this village, 

this settlement, this restoration of 

an earlier time, a simpler time, a time 

we ache to enter.  

It is March, and we are removed from 

these trappings, these rocking chairs and linens, 

the ye olde's and blacksmiths and stablers, 

by a 100 years.  We live in a Great Depression, 

where value shrinks and dies.  Here in this 

museum the air is tale, the ledges 

are dusty, the sachets of lavender and 

potpourri have dried out, we agree to 

return to this story because we 

do not dare face the cold rain, ourselves, 

the rain chilling our skin, the smells of copper 

and dirt and skunk flooding from the  marshes.  

We are each of us desperate to find our way, 

desperate to hide, each afraid that the lives 

we've been living are not wholly lies but 

not wholly true, either.  If only we could 

remain here, behind this old glass.  If only 

we could hide in this story that was never true, 

the lies of the Great Narrative, and live 

among the trappings of deceit, the shared 

awareness that it was all good, it was all 

so much better, it was even better 

than we can imagine now that we are 

trapped in our own time, our own lives, our own 

fear of the rain.