The Hour Falling Light Touches Rings of Iron

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(at the First Iron Works of America, Saugus, MA)

You must remember,
Pittsburgh is not like this,
would never have been found
without the rod bending right here,

sucked down by the earth.
This is not the thick push
of the three rivers' water
hard as name calling…

Allegheny, Susquehanna
and the old Monongahela,
though I keep losing the Ohio.
This is the Saugus River,

cut by Captain Kidd's keel,
bore up the ore barge heavy
the whole way from Nahant.
Mad Atlantic bends its curves

to touch our feet, oh anoints.
Slag makes a bucket bottom
feed iron rings unto water,
ferric oxides, clouds of rust.

But something here there is
pale as dim diviner's image,
a slight knob and knot of pull
at a forked and magic willow.

You see it when smoke floats
a last breath over the river road,
the furnace bubbling upward
a bare acidic tone for flue.

With haze, tonight, the moon
crawls out of Vinegar Hill,
the slag pile throws eyes
a thousand in the shining,

charcoal and burnt lime thrust
thick as wads up a nose.
Sound here's the moon burning
iron again, pale embers

of the diviner's image loose
upon the night. Oh, reader,
you must remember,
Pittsburgh is not like this.