"Steel Ethereal"

by Alexander Baker

​That city’s teams make plays like ivy scales brick

and steel beams weigh

Like light shimmers across glass inbound day after day

Cut through the air carrying fortress spirit

Many veins bridging rivers, these great arteries lay

Like a kaleidoscopic no-hitter

Like coal in windowpanes still glitter

This salt of the earth won’t quit

All collar powerhouse hustle and slay

Burial ground soil, earth’s lifeblood in toil

A calendar ends, new narratives spin

A city dropped off in the hills and the rivers

The Paris of Appalachia, its mystique delivers

That sultry lover and vortex undercover

Gravitational pull unlike any other

This fourth river ensouled

Wraps you up below and above her

[ Artwork by James Gyre ]