Cut out by surgical torches

and flung down in a junkyard,

consigned to rust,

an old mixer from the top

of a cement truck lay

wrapped in swaddling viney things.

If you could turn it

like a phonograph cylinder,

stories might pour out,

phantom work hands pulling

handles, milking.

A ghost may stop to light a smoke

and tell you about the building

he last worked,

the plans his crew gave life to

with heavy matter.

But this is the West Side,

the part where an older generation

of progress has dried and cracked,

opening itself for the grass

to grow back,

forgotten by the money

oozing it's way to join bigger money

in Branson.

People still live here, in houses

often patched against atrophy,

driving rusted cars to rusting jobs,

kissing their children at the bus stop

then hitting the want ads,

wishing their lives were as complex

as performing for an hour at the Grand

Palace then haggling with investors

for a few more hours before tennis.

Lives continue here, in shadow.

But stopping to admire the eloquent

decay of the old mixer I wonder,

as Springfield stretches

to cuddle with it's smaller and richer

cousin, if the west side will stay behind

like cellular division, like a snake skin

of dead or fleeing neigborhoods,

In a field of thrown away things.