Cardinal
Paige Szmodis
Steel stacks rust
mightily in the center of the city,
where deep brown furnaces
blush a romantic
rose under rainbow lights
and casino signs.
Birds rest high
on phone lines above
the mill, the steel bridges,
the casino billboards,
they know—they saw
the roaring crimson furnaces,
saw the steel leave, weaving
into tracks and trains,
conquering the city,
saw coal and soot clog
the Lehigh river.
Two country roads away,
past crumbling farm houses
with fading berry barns,
past a dull hill where
we dump our garbage,
past an electricity plant puffing stained
steam into the blushing horizon,
a cardinal flies by—a brilliant
scarlet against a garnet
steel plant—and bangs
its fragile beak on our
backyard window as if to say—
Look, look outside.
