By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A brief, rain-soaked meditation on suburban Pennsylvania, where Budweiser mist and leaded window glass soften the lawns that now cover yesterday's coal mines and the stone homes of the masters' sons.
The entire poem fits on a beer can's worth of breath — rain on the Budweiser, mist on the leaded window, soft lawns over coal mines, stone houses built by the masters' sons. The compression is the point: Mount Lebanon's suburban comfort is only three lines deep before it hits the 'dreaded man's time' underneath, and the speaker's getting misty is as much about what the rain dissolves as what it reveals.