Water in Chicago

Water in Chicago

I chose this city because of what the lake taught me
the first time I saw it: happiness
is saturation

Part of me believes this, but part of me condemns:
I am too beholden to aesthetics;
I upset myself

Every “I,” every eye, is political—
Mine as I stand on the edge of the sand
The eye of the lake, regarding sky
The eye of the camera that captured the earliest surviving photograph
          (For though I thought it would choose a person, it, too, found worth in a view)
And the eye of the temple in Wilmette, reminding me that even beautiful things we think are free go unseen by the poorest among us
          (Matthew Desmond writes of a woman native to Milwaukee who’s never seen the lake)

So how can I enjoy what lies before me? And yet, I do—
Dusk comes; it changes things,
rippling pinks across the powder blue of lake and sky
Variation gives meaning to distance, and I imagine I can
almost glimpse all the evenings I’m meant to spend here
spread before me; pocket evenings I could hold
in my palm, somehow extending
to the rim of the world

The lake strikes up my hunger, then tames it;
limits the city’s searching lights
Years from here, I will know what I don’t know now:
Every time until the last time I flew
out of Chicago at night, I looked beyond
the airplane’s thumbprint window,
and onto every darkness,
I projected water

 

 

 

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Publishing Information

• “The First Photograph” (circa 1826), Henry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond (Crown, 2016).

Art Information

• “Pastel City” © Eric Allix Rogers; Creative Commons license.