Dad’s in hospital again

…and we wonder is this it: Is this the last time?

Despite its weak current the Calumet persists:
an oedema of smoke and soot, flowing past
hog butchers and meat packers, back-of-the-yards
warehouses that echo with the clank of tool and die.

The river of dirt-slag of south Chicago storm drain
runoff, nocturia so toxic it cannot sustain life — leeches
electrolytes, the pig iron from an oxygen blast furnace,
carried home on rusted sediment to the Indiana Harbor.

In the lee of this Gotham the shadows of
obsidian skyscrapers loom gangster-large
over lake, warping along the waves that crush
your lungs, drown you where you sit.

And we wonder is this it … is this the last time.