What is it above the Cuyahoga—the fire,
the bruise of cloud, and everything behind it
blushing, the gash beneath a cirrus wisp,
the drip of gloaming as a wound from stacks

to sky: a molten pour reversed. I asked him
and he raised a knot of hand—a fighter’s wrist
taped heavy up above an empty pail—pointed
between river, land, and ash, a crooked finger
to the heart of U.S. Steel. I said: it looks

like hell. He said: it’s where I work. It’s where I’ll go
tomorrow. He taps my catechism, flicks a paint chip
from the stoop, retrieves it like a feather—like a part
of wing, of bird, of flight through copper sky.