Walking Elegy
Brilliant chilled Monday
Curving down the Purple Line to French class
Il y a le Hancock Building
Il y a les arbes avec leurs feuilles vertes et rouges
Reading Walking Theory thinking air and light
So like San Francisco if light were elevation
Climbing sun towers glass a massive body of water
Feeling the edge of things land's end or muddy middle
Why I like this train is in the S's it describes
The black man in the pinstripe suit who is also reading poetry
The middle-aged white men in glasses looking at notebooks or screens or the window
The woman with tight curly hair bent listening to her red phone
The way we pass impossibly close to the bricked edges of buildings
I decide to get off at Merchandise Mart and wander out through the food court
Following an Exit sign through a succession of blank white doors
Industrial stairway down and a last door bearing a label
THIS DOOR IS UNLOCKED so we take for granted small freedoms
Then down another blind corridor to double doors also unlocked
And into the blinding sunshine slip on my shades and go look at the river
In time to see the architecture tour boat paddling past
Then following the river eastward under the heavy Argos-eyed Mart
Passing the heads of capitalists arranged on pylons like pikes
AARON MONTGOMERY WARD 1844-1913
EDWARD A. FILENE 1860-1937
GEORGE HUNTINGTON HARTFORD 1833-1917
(George with his pointed beard looks a little like Lenin seen from below)
JOHN WANAMAKER 1838-1922
THE MERCHANDISE MART HALL OF FAME
MARSHALL FIELD 1834-1906
(Marshall has a stiff mustache and wings combed into his hair)
FRANK WINFIELD WOOLWORTH 1852-1919
JULIUS ROSENWALD 1862-1932
GENERAL ROBERT E. WOOD 1879-1969
One thing we can say for sure of these men is they aren't alive
Train thundering stately now over the Wells Street Bridge
Let's pause and study the water skinned with floating trash
A plastic bottle with cleaner water in it bobs drunkenly just at the surface
Green Starbucks straws, potato chip bag, sticks and what looks like a frisbee
Another tourist boat passes its vision calibrated upward
Is what I write here predictable calculable from the influences of my past
Am I predetermined to see through soft Marxism that demonumentalizes my city
Vaguely tropical floral arrangements studding the bridge lurid dark pinks and oranges
May be a trick of my sunglasses which shade everything gray and green
I am not too interested in the history but I do enjoy walking across bridges
One thing this Chicago is in this moment is scarcely populous
There's a panhandler crouched on the south end with scarcely any passersby to panhandle
A very small person in sunglasses could be of any sex
I don't have any change I say to myself and linger with small irony
In and out of cold shade more people a firetruck wails across Clark Street
Closer to Marina City a place the Jetsons might have lived
Maybe they will someday weren't they from our future?
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People on their smoke breaks in a kind of terraced garden
Overviewing a gravel barge and an angled crane pointing to "55"
Black-eyed Susans eye me and these little violet cups
Even smaller I think that's heather a profusion of tiny trumpets
What I don't know about flowers would fill a much much longer poem
Paper cup in the flower bed of you I know the species
Sun feels good the sky had only trace elements of cloud
Is this my place my time to shine my element my mind?
The river lumping with barges one has detached metal scoopers gigantic
Yellow and red like mustard and ketchup like blind mouths biting the surface
Under the corncobs now an impression of whiteness but they're really not white
Just open to the sky and curved like cellular biology
Suddenly under a tent they're setting for lunch at Smith & Wollensky
Where the Cajun Marinated Bone-In Rib Eye goes for 49 and the Butcher Burger for 13
Think I'm getting hungry and it's State Street so time to swing north
Curious inscription on the bridge house PRESENT BRIDGE BUILT IN 1949
"Present" is something persistent apparently capable of linking worlds
Now I'll see more foot traffic still thinking about that woman
I decided that she was a woman and I should have given her a buck
Since change has apparently no value the climate march in New York topped 400,000
That's a lot of pennies but still it seems like change for chumps
Given the stakes how can air still be crisp and delightful if impure
Bus kiosk Queen Latifah who is "Up Close and Personable"
Passing the Museum of Broadcast Communications pictures of Agnes Moorhead and Ira Glass
The rest have faces for radio the sun hasn't penetrated here
Passed by a bald man in his sixties in orange jeans blue sweater round sunglasses and white tufts of hair above his ears
I look like any asshole walking around tapping on his phone
Alley full of dumpsters young kerchiefed guy pacing with a cigarette
Two identical cubes across the street except one's a garage and one's made of brick
It seems like no one comes to the sidewalk anymore except as an excuse to smoke
Except for that woman in a black hijab crossing the street looking at her phone
White guy in a Bears shirt and madras shorts is really rocking his look
Better the young Asian man in a slim-cut suit and no necktie
There's the Hancock again its rabbit ears tuning in to the sky
Under onion domes of Bloomingdales like a deconsecrated Orthodox church
I think that after class I'll hike back down Michigan to the Art Institute
Visit my Sargent paintings and say farewell to Magritte
The REDHEAD Piano Bar Chili's Quartino Self Park Michael Anthony
Cop sauntering toward me wearing a backpack like a grade schooler
A couple in neutral colors holding hands as they cross Ontario
Here's a place with those woven chairs that make you think of a Paris cafe
But to return to inequality it seems these streets are pretty well scrubbed
Under towers of Erie a plumbing truck sticks its nose down into the sewers
Autocorrect wanted "seers" but I'm only skating on the surfaces
Of this Monday morning in Chicago September 22nd 2014
I think I know that guy no he's up and moved to New York
Put it on the blog where it has a chance of keeping company
Cadence of my eyes following State Street for mes devoirs
Holy Name Cathedral's receiving a touch-up on this day
From another reaching crane all of us two hands up harmlessly reaching
Now in wild overcompensation I give five bucks to a man in a wheelchair
Because how can I give him nothing when he asks while I'm writing a poem?
What any of us can do. This day is given to walking
Speaking French badly looking at paintings going home to my wife and daughter
As if what I love will remain, as if
"Your love will let you go on." No one here remembers California,
What Jack Spicer said.
