Prairie Town Poem by Patrick O'Reilly

Fifth street. Sixth street.
I cannot abide by a town that will not name its streets.
There are no landmarks,
No old stories to explain,
Why George Street is not Water Street
And why that is certainly not King's Bridge Road.

No one has ever fallen in love on Third Street
The way that I fell in love on Duckworth Street
With a brown-eyed girl one drunken night.
No one has ever gotten themselves lost on Fifth Street
The way that I got myself lost on Factory Lane
Looking for a job in the middle of a rain storm.

And who knows,
Fifth Street might be just as good as Sixth Street,
But I'm walking through a strange industrial prairie town
And I couldn't be bothered to find out.