Among the smoke and fog of a coal fire,
the steel and the city
sticks to my lungs,
clings to my walk,
while the smokestack’s
and the brick’s dust that floats aloft
with the steel mill and rail car sounds,
soot into Woo, dust into Aah,
and haunts my every thought
with a Chicago Poet’s lines
who’s a mountain to American gods.
© J.P.V.
