Chicago night climbs
out of soot-black upraised hands
Chicago night climbs
out of the ashcan kingdom of clattering hopes
Chicago night climbs
out of the el-voice that is my voice
grumbling and screeching under mute buildings
on Wabash clamoring down dead-end alleys
to frisk black shadows for a tomorrow
Chicago night climbs
out of the vacant eyes of dime-store dummies
abandoned in the busted windows of Uptown
Chicago night climbs
out of the blackness of bibles
stacked in the Baptist churches on King Drive—
out of the static crackling of racist cop radios
out of the thick brown shopping bags
of sleeping drunks in Bughouse Square
Chicago night climbs out of the city’s open hands
its palms crisscrossed with rusted railroad tracks
spelling the jobless future of line workers
Chicago night reaches out for me with its powdered smile
Harbors my loneliness
Hides me
Floods me
Creates me
Fills my empty pockets with its jazzhall rock
I ride with the city into darkness I rise
beyond what I can ever be in the interrogating daylight
taking into myself all that is there
as a whirling hubcap holds the whole night
the whole world
Doug Macdonald works in a native plant garden near Chicago.