Buskers harmonized alongside buskers
With guitars just two blocks down from more
Buskers working a fiddle and a washboard
On the sidewalks of the notably hippy-ish
Art town of Nelson on a sunny summer day.
People ate tacos at one cafe, large pastries
At another, heaps of poutine at a third.
If two persons passed each other one way
They would most likely cross paths again
Going the other, if not at some corner shop
Or checkout counter. Cars bustled, hunting
Elusive parking spots or weaving around
The pedestrians who took their entitlement
As an invitation to risk hospitalization.
In Al's basement barber shop below the pole
That had been revolving at street level above
Its casement windows since at least 1948
(The earliest any octogenarian customer
Could recall coming in as a boy to lower
His ears), seven men sat patiently in a row
While the young-ish woman now the owner
Mowed them down, chatting about camping
And fishing, the days when Gene was alive,
The days when the original, eponymous
Albert still owned the joint, and so forth.
Local history had gone back to being
What all history was once, stories and chat
That wouldn't survive except as daily blather.
Two long, young men in tattered hemp
Sat on their backpacks by the pharmacy,
One tugging his ginger dreadlocks, the other
Explaining, "But at least when I lived in a tent
I had some spending money every month."
"But you don't want to live outside, do you?"
A round family of four in shorts walked past.
A man on crutches thought, if only the stones
Could talk, not because they would tell me
Interesting things they'd heard, but because
I would like to hear something speak but not
In words, something not a monkey or a bird.
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