Life comes apart very visibly toward the end. There are so many little cycles of birth and death; the death of a town is one.

You likely didn't see your town come to life some summer of capital years ago. Maybe it was the mills, making the earth hum with the urgency of constant production. Maybe it was a fortuitous location on the sea, with crushing hopeful crowds piling off boats to partake in the commerce of others who had similarly come ashore. Or maybe a new route between the places of commerce and production had bought the lives of commerce and production to the wild.

You probably are seeing some community's not-so-august fall, with the humming machines silent, the crowds cynical, and the routes between places empty of trade. Frost came early to end summer, and the fall seeps into every yard and home.

Walking and riding the streets of the new ghost town are those spirits who are only vaguely aware they are dead. They are still flesh and blood, they still dream, and they still rear pale little children. 'What went wrong?' they say, 'Are we less daring? More selfish? Too caring?'

Did we do anything different at all? The world moved on without us, and we let it go.

So now, fellow spirits, we must be called back to life, or, more precisely, cry out we never stopped living. These, our streets, we once built and will build again. Our roofs we'll reroof. Our stores we'll stock. Our larders we will fill with the fruits of our own labor and our own land.

Ours together, we'll say,

because the world moved on without us,

because we forgot the world is ours,
and  it wont be taken again.

Never forget,

and enjoy the spring.