Asphalt lanes follow the tracks
up past the old Indian school.
Steel rails sleep in their orange
stain of no trains and no ore
to feed Anaconda’s stack.
The tunneled mines of Butte were flooded
long ago and it drove this mighty
smelter cold. Its molten Friday wage
no longer flows nor pays the
bills:
the furnace, dreams and workers gone,
their debts still pinned to
its chest.
Nothing comes here now except
winter and its hungry Bighorn;
nothing stays here but the gritty
rainbowed puddles of melted snow.
The smokeless stack atop the slag
heap keeps its wearied watch.
The aged sexton tending to
the graves, yet to dig his final
plot and mark the job as done.
The money days are lost,
the work and families shorn.
Tonight’s clean-faces buying
the tavern beer will never hang
along these walls of smelted glory.
The only lights in town flash:
Sheep
Sheep
On the Road
Drive Slow
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