Winnemac and Winchester

Sheets and Slips

Even when it’s freezing, on solitary bike trips home

As I pass over drain covers in the middle of the glistening, perpendicular streets,

Something belies the solidity and grid of Chicago

And of my own sense of where and who I am.

 

Somehow, despite the cold

I hear the reassuring summery gurgle of water—

Liquid and lively, so unlike the frigid rectangles above—

 

Rushing towards somewhere important

All beneath my wheels,

And I sense that the city is adrift

Tentative and hesitant

Pitched between chaos and opportunity

Bobbing like a bottle

On hidden currents

Like the sheets of ice I see on Lake Michigan

Carried here and there by the tug of

Streams

Slipping to we know not where

Before they are eaten away to nothingness

By the gentle lapping of warmer water.

 

The city’s fixed, the air biting, the ground ice-hard,

But underneath the urban crust

There’s warmth and movement

Lurking growth

But also, from these manhole covers,

The whiff of sulfur

A rotting stink, as if the city

Is subsiding into something less than alive.

 

Done