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Wood Street, Latrobe, PA.

What used to be the hill above the village,

hemlock forest first, then oak,

then farmer's field and pastureland,

then sold, no doubt, in trying times

and scribed in lots for workers' homes

above the valley mills that closed last century,

rusting now to riverbank again,

the houses sagging in their plastic skins,

the joys and miseries unchanged within,

the hill in slow return to distance.


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