Industrial District

sparkles at night, an earthbound
constellation. By day, trains
snake through it moaning
for their glory years. Pigeons fly
under the high-arched freeway
bridge; in and out of
broken warehouse windows;
over the beep of backing semis,
clattering forklifts hoisting pallets;
among the blackberry tangles
that cover waste areas
faster than fire can burn.

Kingdom of pigeons and
loading docks, noisy and
drab by day with gray-smoke
feathers, silent glitterbox
by night: flanked by flowing
water and grain elevators,
piers like fingers combing
loot from the river: this is land
that remembers swans in
flocks that blackened the sky.
A hundred years from now
it'll remember the trains

and after that, the trucks.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside