My People
My people left. Choosing a blustery day
to blow away the debris, then walking and drying
with a new stride in the fire of a distant, blanching sun.
My people wandered. Giving up rural dirt and poverty
to toss bones in the grimy, crowded, heartless, streets of Chicago,
their sweat and tears, those little pearls born of the smallest
expectations mixed into the bricks of the west and south sides.
My people stayed. Like a footprint memorialized in fresh sidewalk cement,
rooting fast and staying like strong, thorny weeds.
My people chronicled. Telling tall tales like a storm report,
like a ship's log, like a map, leaving a trail
for ourselves, leading us back home, back inside,
stories still whispered in kitchens or yelled on corners.
My people made a city. Building skyscrapers, streets, sewers,
railroads, bridges, and subways, then
driving streetcars and trains, walking their beats
as cops, delivering milk, eggs, blocks of ice at dawn.
They taught it, policed it, kicked it,
laughed, joked, and sang about it,
healed it, sold it, bought it back,
beat it up again, and wept for it.
My people spent their lives at work.
They helped make this city run.
They wept for it, as if it was the old country,
then lay their yellow bones to rest.
I too have wandered and found my way home.
I have stood on the shoulders of grandmas and nuns,
of a bibliophile milkman who couldn't sit still,
of a clan that pulled the clouds down to earth.
I looked at what's above. I drank too much of what's below.
I am like my people, I am not alone.