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 assured 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