Razing the Mills

The wrecking ball
like a clumsy metronome
keeps time
in staggered beats
as it taps
the façade
of the monolith
with a heavy
kiss.

Asbestos laden
frames crack,
panes of glass and
floorboards steeped in
a hundred years of machine oil
and sweat
split,

tumble down the bones
of the behemoth,
slam the ground
and send a rumble
to the rocks
across the river.

What’s left is blasted to bits –
bulldozed, swept
into tall piles,
shoveled into trucks
and hauled away,

or blown by handfuls
into the wind
with a wish

that they won’t
fill the hole
with poison this time,
that what’s built

in its flattened place
won’t be an empty box
of concrete and glass
with a sun bleached
“for lease”
sign in the window –

this year, the air
is tinged in color,

even the tips
of the seagulls’ wings
are red.

-Maggie Cleveland
(first published in Amerarcana: A Bird & Beckett Review, 2010)