Be Good

August 31st, 2015
Chicago, IL

"Be Good"

The West Loop stretches out
     Like a pool of brick and steel
          gathering around the base of the city.
The wind whips down
     wet and sharp,
And everybody's pushing through it,
Plowing their way through the weather
     like a ponderous crowd.
As it is,
The crowds are thin,
     gaunt 'n single walkers with their eyes
          two feet up their umbrellas.
Wet-eyed men and women
     flit back and forth beneath the tracks,
Dipping into alcoves,
Slipping into burrows warm with coffee,
     heat,
          and chittering with conversation.

By Green Street,
     just a jump East of Morgan Station,
An age eaten woman curls beneath a jutting pillar of steel,
     shooting up to hold the platform.
She's wrapped in a wet blanket,
     humming to herself.
Above her head,
Scrawled on the column
     like a haunting smile,
          with that Cheshire Cat feeling,
Some kind of Crayola crayon wrote,

     "be
          good"

The woman shiver with the tracks
     as the trains roar into the city.