Robert Gibb was born in the steel town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. He is the author of five previous books of poetry: The Origins of Evening (1998), which was a National Poetry Series winner (selected by Eavan Boland); Late Snow (1993); Momentary Days (1989); The Winter House (1984); and The Names of the Earth in Summer (1983). His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, four Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants, a Pushcart Prize, the Wildwood Poetry Prize, and the Devil’s Millhopper Chapbook Prize. He currently lives on New Homestead Hill above the Monongahela River.

The scale of the machine those nights,
Hard above us like the sky: one weld
And then another where fire poured

Into shapes, the great sheds vast
As hangars placed end to end,
Cranes in the rigging of their girders.

Three miles of the river. Three shifts
In which to raise up Leviathan,
Daily, from tons of battered earth.

Common labor or millwright, you could
Feel heat shimmering on your face
Twenty feet from the ovens, see

Loose flakes dancing upon the backs
Of slabs. You could watch as almost
Molten metals were being rolled

Into finished lengths of plate.
Everything there fed the flames
Except what came burning from them,

The night sky glittering like a coal seam,
Blast furnaces and open hearths
Glowering through clouds of smoke.