Train Tides

Each route a line
each line a color
each color the cornucopia
of neighborhoods it touches
at the center,
Chicago's pulsing uroboros
the Loop
with trains
like tendrils
reliably crawling
(rarely running)
out and out and out
to the city's
ever dilating boarders
and back again.

We, the passengers
make up
the shifting personality
of each mercurial car
at times affluent or raucous
subdued or supportive
for some
the crowd, the press, the hassle
is but inconvenience
the stalwart CTA
merely function
but we are all citizens
of this City of Broad Shoulders
from the cackling homeless
to the loquacious elderly
to the misanthropic teens
covertly smoking between cars
and to all those more calm
and better mannered.

We are
the roiling mass
the humanity
that populate our
undersung metropolis
and the L
the Petri dish
in which we congregate
what could be more worthy
of participation.