Three Rivers

Every weekday morning I drive the farm road shortcut
to this town, past overgrown orchards, aluminum sided
ranches with gravel flower beds, turnips for sale,
abandoned trucks rusting next to clumps of white iris.
In Three Rivers, life throbs like a splinter jammed
under the nails of students I’ll see, years later,
slouched against the package store, dulled and vacant.

On the bridge between the Tampax factory and Tenczar’s,
the sun rises in spreading pink fingers, mist backlit,
hovers over dark water where three rivers push
against each other. Smoke from the factory climbs
a rosy ladder, chimneys up and down Main Street
pour out pastel puffs. I wave to the old woman who
walks her grizzled dog to the trestle, wonder
if she notices the light, the way a place reveals
its beauty, before she strides down the tracks.

By afternoon, drug dealers prowl the bridge,
out-of-work men spit in the water, dangle
fishing lines over the rail into a spot no fish
would choose. Bleached blonde child-mothers
with bare midriffs, fake leather boots, push
strollers to the Quik Stop for butts, diapers
and Coke, past Amvets bar, Pulaski Park
and Dominick’s perpetual neon coffee cup.

I think of the greasy-haired boy who slumps
in the last row, growls, props mud-clotted boots
on the desk, refuses to read or bring a pencil.
Once he wrote a poem about becoming a golden leaf.
When I read it, his face shone like morning
before smoke darkened and settled over everything.