Song for the City

City of knuckled brick and backlot prayers
to rusted spires and mill-town ghosts.

City where train songs braid the night 
with their high whistle and clack.

Worcester, who wears history like a second skin,
patched and burnished by the hands of families

who stayed long until the shift ended--those who still 
strike iron spikes into the shapes of hearts.

City whose streets are lined with the laugh
of old men on benches telling Woo-Sox stories

as children breathe their cotton clouds 
into the ebbing winter air. City whose cars 

slip through Kelley Square in a chaotic rhythm,
singing their hymns of near-misses

and unspoken truces. Worcester, whose pulse is
the rhythm of traffic and drum. Whose beauty

is red brake lights dotting the streets to usher
all into a new season. Whose poetry emerges

from the salt-stained sidewalks and in the neon hum
of diner lights where coffee is covenant 

and where the poets and nurses sit side by side
watching the city arise in the steam of their cups.

And when the last snows of the season stop falling
over Union Station, city whose song is memory

settling in--echo of millworkers and immigrants
carving their names into the city’s ribs. Echo

of youth and bloom, standing with their faces
to the sky. Standing with their eyes alight.