As I eat breakfast my gaze wanders off to the stop sign guarding the quiet corner where we live. It’s leaning half way over.
There was no moon last night and no car needing admonition so maybe it lay down on a bed of snow for a little shut-eye
and I’ve caught it red-faced as it rises from its nap. I won’t tell anyone. Talk about a thankless job—it doesn’t need
all eight of its sides to count the cars that we call traffic on the side road coming up from the bay. It knows
every scratch and dent and driver in a neighborhood where slow is a way of life and stopping just
gentle punctuation. It must be hard to be a sentry under orders not to talk, spending every hour of your life
telling people what they already know, never speaking from the heart, never saying drive carefully or come back
in one piece. No doubt it envies electronic signs that can change their messages at will. I’m a lollipop
with angles it could flash at school kids waiting for the bus or a winter berry at the garden club or, at no one in particular,
a red push pin on a life-size map of Owls Head marking the solemn spot where we stop to say job well done.