Another pickup truck morning 
in the sweat-dripping Illinois summer.
He’s leaving night shift at the steel mill.
Hank Williams on the morning AM.

Burly, no-neck millwright and union 
steward, my father, swinging his lunch pail 
as a weapon. His language of blast 
furnace, hod carrier, slag, coke oven. His
utter contempt for company men. Working 
where his father and grandfather had.

Grimy hands even pumice couldn’t scrub
clean. Goggles, steel-tipped work shoes, 
five children who left for the Coast 
leaving him in his rusty world where 
the mill and the Catholic church closed.

When the final mill whistle blew, he stood in the 
street calling out, only to hear an answering echo.