For Those Begging Spare Change outside the Chicago Board ofTrade

The ghosts of Chicago are not immaterial, they are not sad or lost.
They wander among us, worldly and explicit.
They fear the hawk and speak respectfully of the mayor.

Hoping for nickels their laces flap open, pockets full
of pint bottles and luckless Lotto tickets.

Numbers do not tell their story, nor the ratt le
of disconso late coins in paper cups,
nor sleek commuter trains departing modern stations,
nor the wall behind them with its monument to men at work
in a more just republic and a century of simpler labor.

Their song is not the wind but an insistent click of longing
Ive heard all day, every block of the city, every footfall,
until, on a bench near the lake at evening,
I discover embedded in the heel of my boot
a battered lapel pin in the shape of an American flag