Detroit

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Briggs is just gone like Parisiennes on Michigan Avenue,

centuries are a Detroit Demolition of hard driving men.

Crazy Peach Cobb taunted the Indians, “I’m goin’ to steal!”

Then he would, shaving fuzz off rookies’ shins, honed cleats

gleaming like chrome teeth heading a dust tail charge,

intimidation the means of winning at tolerable expense.

In ’79 the Free Press wrote that recalls had outscored

production that year and in ‘29 conductors with poles

scaled depression hobos like rust scabs from under trains.

Henry Ford tramped the first line with holes in his shoes.

Pontiac’s men tossed slain captives to float by the fort

near where French missionaries had hacked the stone idol

with a consecrated axe, pitching the rubble into the river,

morality joined to survival by the Erie to Huron strait.