Arrival

I came to Chicago across the plains of Illinois.
I was in the back, and Brian and Kathy in the front
became silhouettes against the blood-glow of sunset.
On each side, disappearing for a thousand miles into the darkness,
lay America, country of the road.    

As always, I thought of Chuck Berry, Ray Charles,  
Jackson Browne, Paul Simon,  
and so on, and so on.  
All of those voices which brought America to us  
on our cosy European island.  
And the voices told us of another world,  
a world of high-schools and sidewalks,  
homecoming queens and fire roads,  
motels and freeways,  
drive-ins and liquor stores  
and deserts and canyons.  
 
And suddenly we were in Chicago,  
looking up at skyscrapers,  
plunging into Carl Sandberg’s ‘city of the big shoulders’.  
Then we were driving down Halsted,  
yellow sodium lights
laying everything bare. 
 
We found the place we were looking for.  
We stopped and got out.  
Through the locked door, an empty hall and a staircase.  
I rang the bell, feeling tired, jaded, irritable.  
Down the stairs came a girl,  
blonde-haired, suntanned, smiling,  
a crisp white shirt with an upturned collar,  
blue jeans - a weary traveller’s dream.  
Deborah, no movie star ever made a better entrance.  
You made it all work.  
You gave joy and life.