box turtle road

Let’s Meet in Carrboro

Today let’s meet in Carrboro:

Paris of the Piedmont

West End, Lloydtown, Venable . . .

Today when phoebes nest in their wattle and daub

And fireflies cross their first open meadow

Let’s meet in Carrboro

Across-the-tracks town for two centuries:

cracker town, mill town, music town

Today when knotty-heads start pebble beds

And the first yellow-breasted chat flies into Bolin Forest

Let’s meet in Carrboro,

Where Alton Junius Alston ran a multi-racial pool hall

For decades off Main Street, wearing shark-skinned suits

Tailored in Chicago and calling everybody mister:

The tow-headed boy-children skipping high school,

The corner hipsters with baggy Pacos,

captains of industry

Hiding from their offices in Chapel Hill.

Let’s meet in Carrboro

When Beltane fires are blooming, maypoles fling

And every country in the world except America

Celebrates International Workers Day

Let’s meet in Carrboro

Hardwood crossties town

Art town-coffee town-whiskey town-boom!

The home of Nyle Frank’s Invisible University

Almost visible, somewhere near Shelton Street.

Today when ground squirrels feast on the honey-nectar of poplar blossoms,

Grey tree frogs find their voices

And evening bats mate in the middle of the air after dancing for hours

Let’s grind our bodies against the music and

Meet in Carrboro

We saved the Carr Mill

Sheltered Libba Cotton in 1906

Daphne Athas in 1932

Mike Nelson in 1995

The Carrboro Citizen in 2007

We have The Hoop Convergence

And the Carrboro Music Festival

Poetry, poetry blooming everywhere.

We have gone by many names

But let’s meet in Carrboro

Today

Under ukulele skies

When the first spotted egg releases its wren song

While hawkweed flowers bloom

And hummingbirds return to every back yard off James Street

Let’s meet

in Carrboro.