There's something about morning
in the rough-hands world
of western PA,
the worn flannel shirts,
faded collar blue denim,
rusted fender four by fours,
crackle-paint frame houses,
steel diners,
and the furious pounding
of an Aerosmith tune,
blasting from a car radio
at furnace fire August 10 a.m.
outside shiny silver donut shop
in the shadow of Pittsburgh,
somewhere between the rivers,
where summer lush mountains
melt into the blackness of oil,
glowing open hearth crimson and
bright spitting neon yellow
sloshing massive black ladles,
thick melted ore flooded furnace
forging fresh slag
to rolling mills
and smooshed into
gun metal plates
turning rusty bronze
on summer flatbed railroad cars...
Another mill town morning
Aerosmith raspy-voiced fusillade
molten sonic fury
crashing like steel,
the clang of tempered plates dropping,
the smell of fire, sweat,
smog and sugar donuts.

first printing,
Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Vol. 24-1