Song for Early Spring

The third-shift
road crews
were chieftans
on the lakeshore
in the early black,

their efforts
and their pathways
dim flames licking
shoulders on
remembered Dan Ryan
in early spring;

and the sacrificial flare stacks
were torchlight
alongside bogs;

the chill that spilled
around and inside ears
in the sudden still
when stopped doorways
opened up
near unfamiliar
intersections.

And the messages that
ballast gave
through shoes gone thin
and yard limit signs

Risen up like skinned sentries
and things
that were only their
shadows
in the dawn

Were fanned
and embered
and pocketed
and unseen.