It’s afternoon, again,

Another purgatory of beer,
Gin, just choose your poison.
A telephone wire
Hangs in balance
Of time and space
While crows and blackbirds
Perch like black lace
On blacker leather.
They’re feathered harbingers all
Of the tough satisfactions,
The wants of this ghost town.
Those birds don’t give a caw!
To river-to-rail iron ore,
Commerce, coke, or
Integrated steel mills.
They don’t know anything –
No, nothing at all -
They’re like us, waiting
For some sign in the sky,
Or an easy way to glide
Them through the day.

-- Samuel Vargo