November 3, 1952 by Michael Ceraolo

From Some Afternoons and Evenings

November 3, 1952


This is the way a world doesn't end:
there was no bang,
there was no whimper,
there was no coverage in the local papers,
much less any nationwide
Today,
the Monday before Election Day,
the Cuyahoga River caught fire
for the twelfth time,
or maybe
the thirteenth; no one was keeping count
The twelfth (or thirteenth) time
clearly wasn't the charm:
after all,
no one had died like in the 1912 fire,
and a million-and-a-half dollars
in property damage was a small price to pay
for the benefits of industrialism
But this fire eventually penetrated
the nation's consciousness:
when
a much-smaller fire occurred in 1969,
the media used photos of this fire
to drive home the message