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This is the house we worked up to.
We are away from the steel mill, but if an east wind blows
we can smell the sulfur, come up the drive it’s October,
the white birch has turned, the pond is littered with leaves.
Last Tuesday my father quit his job
today he wants me to drive with him to the Briar Hill works,
he will go back to the mill, he will crawl back there at 53.
He is lost on Market Street (how can that be?) can’t seem to, could I, can I drive?
But we don’t make it, stop, get out of the car,
walk the path in Mill Creek Park and it’s sprinkling.
Water feeds into the Mahoning from the Cuyahoga River,
Lanterman’s Falls once powered the grain mill.
Looking at it my father takes a cigarette and another
absently handing me the first (he doesn’t know I do).
We smoke them together and as the mist hits they hiss.