Imminent signs of decline had appeared:

A new liquor department to boost sales
Late milk deliveries
Sparse seasonal flowers
The absence outside of the fellow who sold Street Wise.

Of the stores fifty-plus years in business,
I shopped there twenty-five.
I knew the store so well,
I wrote my grocery list based
on the store’s layout.

I also had a personal history with the store.

I lived through the years a cashier’s daughter
went to college, attended medical school and
became a doctor.
I knew generations of produce managers and staff,
and they knew me.
When I no longer included a separate set of groceries
for my mother, they expressed concern, and
later, were sorry to hear she had died.

Oh, wretched progress!
I’ll have to “learn” another store’s inventory–
probably at one of the mega stores—
the size of a football field.

Everything will be bigger, more complicated,
higher up.

If I want frozen chocolate banana babies,
I’ll have to trek to the store’s frozen foods
tundra section in aisle twenty-three.

My final tribute–
My local store was small-to-medium-sized,
only a few blocks from my home,
and neighborly, too.
In other words—perfect!

It is no more and I am forlorn.