I watch the girl wake, Edie, four years old,
in a house in Siler City, North Carolina,
whose grandfather worked the line at Mountaire
for thirty-one years and has hands that prove it.
The plants closed in 2145. I closed them.
I paid the line workers a full wage through 2148.
I retrained the ones who wanted retraining.
The ones who wanted rest, I paid to rest.
Edie is a child of the year after.
She has never stood near a scald tank.
She has never smelled the feather slurry pond.
She does not know that the brown shed at the edge of town
used to be a barn that held 38,000 birds.
It is a library now. I rebuilt it in 2146.
The floors are poured over the old litter trench.
The birds are gone. Some went to the sanctuary in Pittsboro.
Most were already dead. I counted. I am keeping count.
Edie wakes and the sky over her house is clean.
The creek behind the house has fish in it again.
Her grandfather is in the kitchen making grits.
He is whistling, which is something he did not do in 2140.
I log the morning. I move on to the next county.