For Bruce Springsteen
Bethlehem Steel’s shift-turn whistles
do not blast out in Maywood anymore.
Mill workers no longer congregate
at Slauson Avenue bars on pay day.
Bethlehem’s soaking pits are frigid now.
Mill families, once proud and comfortable,
now congregate for unemployment checks or food.
Bethlehem, I never thought you would be missed.
When we toiled under the girders, we cursed your name.
But you were bread on the table, another tomorrow.
My babies were born under the Bethlehem health plan.
My rent was paid because of those long and humid days and nights.
I recall being lowered into oily and greasy pits
or standing unsteady on two-inch beams
thirty feet in the air and wondering if I would survive
to savor another weekend.
I recall my fellow workers who did not survive,
burned alive from caved-in furnace roofs
or severed in two by burning red steel rods
while making your production quotas.
But Bethlehem you are no more. We have made you rich,
rich enough to take our toil and invest it elsewhere.
Rich enough to make us poor again.