Six late-August evenings (3)

3.
The mist climbs down the edges of the soccer field.
We are surrounded: on one side a power substation

With towers, cables and wires stretching out in all directions
Dwarfing the abandoned factory on Commerce with the smokestack

That looks like someone stubbed a giant cigar
Into the earth, back when people were giants;

On the other side a massive mostly empty school for the deaf
And blind trying to figure out what to become in

A new century where you don’t isolate children.

The mist is rolling, from the corners of the field
Toward the pre-teen daughters in their blue and red

Pinnies focused on the soccer scrimmage.
My daughter is out there, growing taller and stronger

And more invisible with each passing minute.
Coaches are like a good timepiece made in another

Country, they don’t stop for anything. Not even for
Parents whose daughters are disappearing before

Their eyes, straining to identify a joyful yell for the ball
As it skids over the wet blades into the future,

beyond the taut lines of current and the brooding brick
and the skeletal structures of power behind them, looming.