A poem for Pittsburgh

Unrusting Potential

 

 

City of steel,

buttressed with bridges,

champion structures rusted to the river side,

even the mutated catfish know it waits to be reborn.

And many who survived the slow smoky death

of job after job, flushed into dirty waterways alongside

their golden fantasies,

though once blackened by chemical obfuscation,

they slowly open new eyes, yearning

for a city, not lost in the annals of time.

And perhaps they find a new burgh that floats

onto the ocean of their summer dreams,

where the tide cleans away the asbestos nightmare,

 leaving breathable daytime, and a smile

of ironclad proportions,

all amidst a gathering of reunited spirits

and tempered by a gentle, hesitant hello.