Silly little city with your harp street lamps,
blizzards and vigil light stars,
with your tutued street lights
and 30-below wind chills, bandshells and polkas,
and steamy smoky lake's pink waves,
with your huge orange moons rising from the lake,
with your huge red suns rising from the lake,
with your sad jumpers falling into the lake,
& your socialist watershed and Oriental Theater minarets
and Sunday morning Quaker meetings
surrounded by church bells and taverns,
with everyday George Washington
walking down Wisconsin Avenue,
with your ice fishing clinics and beer blessings,
with your seven deadly sins parades,
with your alewives' parades and cladophora winds
and streets named after sausages (Nock),
with Francis Bacon's blue face
on the side of your art museum
and Joseph Cornell's Celestial Navigation
by Birds (Gallery 18) inside your museum,
with your statues of Goethe and Burns,
Olmsted parks and bakery winds,
silly little city that erases me, I keep
fastening your lake winds to the page.