Western Massachusetts

In Western Massachusetts
it can get noisy in the mountains.

We are not Boston,
the residents always shout,
and neither are we New York.
Come and play but dammit,
don’t claim us and overstay.

But Boston and New York
always want to pretend they are pioneers
when they come out to visit or squat
in Western Massachusetts for a weekend or longer.

Whoop dee do, yippie ki yi yo, they rough it in Noho,
they don’t stop in Pittsfield except to pee or poo
on the way to or from Tanglewood.

Isn’t it quaint
and semi-wild, this backyard of ours,
say New York
and Boston?  We’re so fortunate
to have this.  Such pretty colors
and how these empty mills become
so classically ruinous for us,
it’s special.

Chicopee, Holyoke, Springfield
send messages up the grapevine
to Deerfield and Montague: slit
their angsty throats in the night,
but get the money first.  You, Amherst,
Sunderland, hide the bodies
out in Florida, scatter the credit cards
in Williamstown, get back and go
to ground.  No one will look for you
in winter, they’ll just head
for Vermont, and they can have them.

If there’s ever a Berkshire Revolution
it won’t stay noisy for long.  Western Massachusetts
will leave that to the cities.  Instead
the war cry will slip like paper into
a fast stream, melt,
disappear and not be missed
until spring, will be forgotten

by next fall, when it will
start again.  And it will start again
and again.  It will never end.