Man of Steel

I was in the steel business long ago,
Rolling coils of autobody sheet
With special textured rollers, to impart
A finish which would yield a good paint job.

Our plant was a straight line of separate shops
Which stretched from ore crushers and coke ovens
To stately open hearth blast furnaces
To slab casters which molded glowing chunks

Of newborn steel, to hot mills which rolled plate,
To cold mills which reduced the plate to sheet,
To serpentine annealing furnaces,
And finally to our humble skin pass mill.

One day, as we were rolling right along,
There was a gap in coil deliveries
For hours, it seemed. We stood around like fools
Until the system got in gear again.

We soon heard rumors that the cause had been
An accident up by the open hearths;
A gas pipe fitter, high up in the roof,
Had slipped and dropped into the caster sprue

While they were pouring steel, and vaporized
In a brief hiss and telltale plume of mist.
The slab he went into had to be scrapped
For being out of spec for calcium.

A lot has changed since then. The plant is closed
But not torn down, just left to rust and rot,
The town, what’s left of it, has gone to seed,
And I’ve quit wasting time on memories;

But I still think about that man of steel
Whose name I never heard, who fell that day
From this world to the next, and vanished in
A puff of smoke, and hardly left a trace.

Nickel

That pigtailed guy in profile on the front
Is Jefferson, one of the presidents
From back in Roman times, the country gents
Who wrote our fundamental documents.

Now he peers fish-eyed out into a world
Devoid of small farms and enlightenment
Where he is worth five cents, symbolically,
And almost no truths are self evident.

Revival

They used to have them when I was a kid.
A billboard would proclaim a cryptic phrase,
Perhaps “Is Christ divided in this town?”
And cite a verse from First Corinthians;
A final line would give the time and place
Of an impending Whole Truth Tent Crusade.

There were always people who would come,
More than you’d think, whole dressed-up families,
With strings of children, cousins, neighbors, aunts,
Big study bibles, handkerchiefs, and fans,
To fill the rows of folding chairs set up
Beneath an awning in a vacant lot.

They’d have some Holy Roller music first,
Then preaching. The presiding reverend
Would tell how he had been a sinner once,
Possessed by every devil they could name,
Till Jesus saw and sent the Holy Ghost
To take control and claim him for His own.

Then people from the crowd would testify:
Lord, I was lost and weak, a slave to drink;
I had the sickness, Lord, I was afraid,
The doctors said they couldn’t do a thing;
I couldn’t pay my bills, Lord, I was poor;
He beat me, Lord, so hard I couldn’t think;

When all my world was crumbling, Lord, who cared?
When no one else would help me, who was there?
When I was struggling beneath my load,
Stumbling down my godforsaken road,
Who suddenly appeared to comfort me
And share my yoke and burden? None but Thee.

And then the next day it would all be gone,
With only tire tracks and trampled grass
To tell the tale. The preacher would be off
To the next town. The people would return
To where they’d come from, to the old travail
Of this world, and the loneliness of faith.