1 Poem by William Doreski

​Bethlehem


Parting the bushes, you glimpse

an abandoned blast furnace groping

the sky like the blinded Cyclops.


You’ve come so far to see the rust

and ruin of the life you avoided.

Hot metal and the reek of acid,

hopper cars groaning with coke.


You longed for the hiss and rhythm

of steam locomotives plodding

from the port of Erie with ore,

but grew up too late to labor

with hands that now hang useless

before this naked revelation.


Places age more quickly than people,

but leave more rubble to sift.

Framed in elegant foliage,

the industrial excess cloys.


You want to beat down this wreckage

with bare fists, but grimmer forces

plot an erasure more absolute

than you with camera and notebook

could ever hope to impose.


Bionote 

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many journals. He has taught writing and literature at Emerson, Goddard, Boston University, and Keene State College. His new poetry collection is A Black River, A Dark Fall.