you cease to smell the steel plant
after you've lived there for a while
smoke is snow is ash are leaves that blow

through the air aloft
all our houses dim their sliding
to the same soot gray style

and we hang our laundry out on sundays
when they turn the furnaces off


everybody's daddy works up on the line
the stienbrenners and the wilczewskis
have been there the longest time

everybody's mommy squints into the sun
sunday afternoon after all the laundry's done


sometimes a distant siren
can set a dog to barking late at night
then it dominos on down

til every dog is joining in
the first rumours of the layoffs
sang like a distant siren might

and we all perked up our ears
and paced the fence
of the ensuing din


every night, we were glued to the tv news
at six o'clock

cuz it was hard to tell what was real
and what was talk
they explained about the cutbacks

all the earnest frowns
but what they didn't say was that the plant
was slowly shutting down


this town is not the kind of place
that money people go

they make their jokes up on the tv
about all the snow
and they're building condos downriver

from where the plant had been
but nobody really lives here
now that the air is clean


the president $$#ured us
it was all gonna trickle down

like it'd be raining so much money
that we'd be sad to see the sun
mr. wilczewski's brother had some business

out in denver
so they left denver
and everybody knows they were the lucky ones


you cease to smell the steel plant
after you'v ebeen here for a while