19 years old and going nowhere, <br />I got a ride to Bessemer and walked <br />the night road toward Birmingham <br />passing dark groups of men cursing <br />the end of a week like every week. <br />Out of town I found a small grove <br />of trees, high narrow pines, and I <br />sat back against the trunk of one <br />as the first rains began slowly. <br />South, the lights of Bessemer glowed <br />as though a new sun rose there, <br />but it was midnight and another shift <br />tooled the rolling mills. I must <br />have slept awhile, for someone <br />else was there beside me. I could <br />see a cigarette's soft light, <br />and once a hand grazed mine, man <br />or woman's I never knew. Slowly <br />I could feel the darkness fill <br />my eyes and the dream that came was <br />of a bright world where sunlight <br />fell on the long even rows of houses <br />and I looked down from great height <br />at a burned world I believed <br />I never had to enter. When <br />the true sun rose I was stiff <br />and wet, and there beside me was <br />the small white proof that someone <br />rolled and smoked and left me there <br />unharmed, truly untouched. <br />A hundred yards off I could hear <br />cars on the highway. A life <br />was calling to be lived, but how <br />and why I had still to learn.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-bessemer/
