Re-birth

Belching begins early
here at the edge of the world
where boys skeet-shoot
over the steelyard. A truck
tops the rim spewing
black chunked mud
poured dried cracked
pot-holed and poured again
asphalt. Our Appian Way.

Near the blast house
the nursery of unholy
noise drowns any bird-
speak, or bark. All are
mute before the mouth
that pukes the city's bones
up one by one,
its vertebrae straining
to raise its skull.

A hot coal ffssses out
in the Cuyahoga
and joins a scatter
of drift logs to the beach
where the waves sniff
and nudge the sharp-
edged bricks into mollified
forms, circles and curves,
awaiting the great whatever.