A City Wintertime

A City Wintertime

During the winter, after departing
the 9:45, I arrive in the late hustle and
bustle of Chicago, the pounding drone
of car horns, heartbeats, street songs.
The loud growls of businessmen in
the midst of a flaring tirade, young
girls in half-jeans whispering of some
forboding new fashion, camera and eyes
of tourists shining on first, second,
countless trips to some long arms which
long for the gray sky. Their hands
burned and chapped as frozen winds
whip their scarves in time with
the wash of the falling snow. From them
are fearful looks, a worried frown,
a quiet wish that I were elsewhere.
Yet part of me is satisfied, for
they recognize my presence in this
dark world. Others sit on the grounds
forcibly ripped from mother's embrace
our total collective humankind.
Who look, with the tearful eyes marred
by pain and suffering, so much that
my heart is wrenched with as
a mystically sorrowful wonder.
Their very existence denied by
plentifully loud childish ignorance.
Who sit with outstretched hands
waiting for the disgusted spat or
the pitied toss of some bronzed coin
the infrequent proof of halved lives
Their ears only, who hear harmonies
of the unforgiving winter winds,
a bleak, token-whispered carol.