Sunrise ripples west
over the lake in December—
no warmth, little light
high rise after high
rise hard between the IC
tracks and lower State
like Stonehenge hard off
the Ryan driving hard for
the Loop, then O’Hare
no druids here—only
the Housing Authority
with its deep need to
keep the cold city
separate but equal, bound
grid of black, white, brown
The middle passage
ends here, abruptly, in
concrete and silence
Chicago, blind beast,
thresher of the east, middle
and west, rendering
livestock, lumber, grain
and capital into art
and architecture
As he walks Stony
Island—exhaust, exhaustion,
the black boy wanders
the middle passage
a journey without end, by
way of Abe Lincoln
his world much bigger
than it was, so much smaller
and so much the same
so much he did not
know, the grey reality
of industry, ice
apartment full of
cold, roaches, and memories
innocents sleeping
the long dream of
emancipation streaming
through his mind, unkind
Mississippi or
Chicago, two sides of
one fence, Jackson or
Chicago, two sides of one
fence, between the white man and
the chilly blues, don’t
make no difference—
blues is falling, falling down
like December rain
Copyright © 2019 by Anthony Walton. This poem was first printed in Pleiades, Vol. 39, No. 1 (January 2019). Used with the permission of the author.
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