Shops still closed. There’s no one else afoot,
and hardly any traffic, only the pulse
of 7 a.m. on a Monday morning; only my dog
and I raising infinitesimal dust.

Outside what began as Fairchild’s Pharmacy,
I stop to read the placard history:
how, digging for the foundation, they uncovered
gold enough to pay for the whole building,

$16,000 back in 1903. How the soda fountain
was topped in marble,
and they sold barb wire oil
to cure chapped hands and saddle galls.

My dog passes the time sniffing
a weed that grows from a crack in sidewalk
where some other dog left its mark;
my dog adept at reading the history of his kind.

Main Street lies deserted
atop what’s laid down like foundation
over dusty earth, holes of history
we can peer into, still looking for gold.

© by Taylor Graham.
Used with the author’s permission.