Ferruginous

I love this word--would like to do more with it, but if I wait until I have time, it will be gone. So here is a brand new first draft poem:

Ferruginous

A graveyard of scrap surrounds the museum,
ferruginous boilers, crusted and rough with scale,
dome-shaped, cylindrical, spherical, knobby
with nuts and frozen bolts, thick plates of iron.
Grass, dandelions and daisies sprout between
rusty behemoths, little islands of green.
I peer into the shadows, into portholes
that smell of blood, ashes and brimstone,
then crawl through a long tunnel into the belly
of one of the monsters, curl to sleep
like Jonah resting in the whale.  It is peaceful
here, where the visitors can’t see me,
Muffled coos of sleeping pigeons
soften the sounds of children shouting, the hoots
of trains and traffic, everything dulls
but the magnified echo of my breath.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
121201-0037-1st