Rush Hour

          every day, Chicago, every morning we crawl
          down your lethargic distressways, the rivers named

          with dignity — the Stevenson, the Kennedy,

          and all the paths aimed purposefully at your heart.

          we want to beat with you; the coffee in our blood

          would have us flow through these veins to offer you life

          but every morning, Chicago, every day, life

          is slow to start as each cell of our self must crawl

          through the same veins/at the same time/with angry blood

          meeting on that hour so insistently named— 

          unwittingly converging, en route to your heart,

          with words, the very rush, of John F. Kennedy,

          “countrymen, ask what you can do,” cried Kennedy,

          speaking now to citizens, who choose to do life

          by committing themselves to fuel a city’s heart

          yet sacrificing themselves—to wit, their great crawl.

          to you, Chicago, our commitment is duly named;

          for you, Chicago, we submit this daily blood.

 ⇋

Points of View

I

In a central atrium of a Chicago university, an old professor stepped unassumingly onto an up escalator. He had white hair and the red face of high blood pressure, and even though the stairs would do the work for him he looked up at them wearily. 

At the same instance, a boy appearing to be in his early teens stepped on to the down escalator on the second floor. He was a black youth, too young to be a college student and darker than most of the students around him, yet he exuded the confidence of one who had come in from the surrounding neighborhood.

Facing each other from a distance, the old man and the young boy made coincidental eye contact, and the professor looked away; but as the white old man and the young black boy approached the point where their escalators made them parallel, the boy did not stop looking. They drew closer. 

“Hi,” the boy suddenly said, staring right at the man. 

“Hi,” the man replied, diverting his eyes. 

“You hate me, don’t you?” the boy said, still looking at him. 

Their paths had reached a juxtaposition, but it was brief and the man had no time to react. The boy was suddenly moving behind him. He was looking back at him, waiting for a reply, but the man did not turn around and he did not say anything. His face became like an old stone, and behind it he hid his fear or his confusion or —surely he would deny this —his hate.

II

I was on my way to the campus bookstore. I used to like to take the stairs, but my heart is not what it once was. A few years ago, I had to start taking the escalator, but after today I might start using the elevator.

One of Chicago’s glorious youth was riding the down escalator; I noticed him a level above me just as I had stepped on to the up escalator. The two escalators run alongside each other, so the boy must have noticed me looking up at him. He was certainly not a college student; he was only thirteen or fourteen and probably skipping school. He was black, so I assumed he had come from the neighborhood just south of here. We’ve seen a lot of neighborhood kids around here these days.

Just before we reached a parallel point, he turned and greeted me. “Hi,” he said, and suddenly he was looking right at me. I’m sure I had never seen this boy before, but I returned the greeting with a half smile and a nod, not sure what more to make of it. The boy was now moving past me, and as he looked back at me he said, “You hate me, don’t you?”

As quick as he had said it, he was behind me, continuing to move down as I moved up towards the bookstore. I tried to hide my surprise, but as the escalator slowly rise I could not help but consider the odd exchange. “No,” I thought to myself at last, “I do not hate you. I don’t even know you.”

III

I will speak for the boy. He has a name, you know. In fact, the only time he should be called boy is when I call him that. That’s my boy. But you can call him by his name. His name is James. James Addams. 

And yes, you could say that he belongs here. Yes, this is his neighborhood. It’s our neighborhood: we have lived here as a family for a hundred years, ever since my grandfather Isaac Addams made his way up here from Louisiana. He was not much older than James at the time, but he had it in him to make a life for himself here in Chicago. This neighborhood has been our neighborhood ever since. It has been James’s neighborhood for all of his fourteen years, and it has been our neighborhood, the neighborhood of the Addams and the Morgans and the Jacksons and the Taylors for longer than there’s been a school here. 

We do not begrudge the school being built here, though. It pushed aside some of our homes thirty years ago, but people have been displaced by worse things. And it does add a certain liveliness, a sense of hope to this part of town.

I’d like to think that James will one day be here as a student of the University. But that’s a few years away. For now, James is part of the neighborhood. He’s my boy, and he’s your neighbor.

Engl. 212, 7/9/90, Prof. Allen; Part III appended in 2011