Our far-flung contributor Tom Sexton has air-mailed a new poem from the Northwest. For those not familiar, Tom is among the Lowell High School Distinguished Alumni, a retired professor at University of Alaska and former Poet Laureate of Alaska, and an all around fine man who has written about 15 books of poems and who misses the streets and sounds and faces of Lowell. —PM

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The Man in the Adirondack Chair

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In one of those otherwise forgettable small towns,

a place where other people happen to be born,

a place where there are no sidewalks to roll up,

a place that was the birthplace of a minor league

baseball player who never made it to the majors,

a man is sitting in an old Adirondack chair,

holding a small flag, waving to everyone who passes by,

even the men wearing orange jumpsuits

looking out of a van with bars on its windows

and the woman in the beamer looking straight ahead.

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—Tom Sexton (c) 2015