Just a Little Fog or Rain in the Wind

It was just an old-fashioned style streetlamp
that the city must have decided was worth
investing in (it and another hundred more
or so just like it)

for some kind of downtown, main street
renovation plan, way back when, who knows
how many years ago,

but it had kind of an exotic, old-timey charm to it,

and the way they all lit up the downtown area,
the side-streets, especially, late at night,
or with a little fog or rain in the wind,
gave our quaint prairie town more of what some of us
imagined to be a hip Portland / 'Frisco feel to it,
maybe just a bit of New Orleans or Paris, even,

places most of us had only read about in magazines
and books or just seen in movies, but possibly
a few had actually visited, once,

maybe even came close to getting lost there
and never returning from.