Chicago

A tree wasn’t a tree,

and a bird wasn’t a bird,

and a window certainly wasn’t a window.

 

There were trains and raindrops;

always some sound bending its wings with the curve of the wind

flying everywhere like life.

 

They were images.

They were metaphors.

They meant something else was going on,

 

and I was lucky to write them down,

to pick up the remnants of their strange wilderness

in a city that desperately needed Batman or Pablo Neruda.

 

And now the world is cold hard facts;

fast food restaurants, car dealerships, and churches,

and a tree is just a tree.