Chicago - Carl Sandburg

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

If She Could Have Her Love For You Only One Day A Year - Tina Kelley

If life bloomed once a year, if we sat in dim rooms the rest of the days, resting,
she would come here for that noontime, to see children waist high,
their attentions wandering like wall eyes, making noises that sound to a single person
like severe distress or pain, but mean delight. She would hear a father shouting
"Olivia! Wait for Maggie!" whatever good that does. Sun off the lake
makes bright veins on the underside of a Japanese red pine,
lightens the bark like a buttercup held under it. She would see the limp-legged wasp,
the bumblebee with jodhpurs of pollen, straddling the sweet stigma of the purple hosta.
She would see the shadows of the waterbug's feet, circled by sharp light.

If she could have her love for this garden only one day a year
she would take souvenirs. Everyone does — a snapshot, a sketch, a stone, a sentence,
two nuggets of food for the koi, moist, in the pocket of size 6x shorts. The honeybees
hump their rumps over their work, walking on the globe of a cloverhead.
She sees that the waterbugs move so seldom, is each polished slide an annual event?
She would lie down and read and walk away stronger,
with the memory of the comfort of the sun on the soles of her bare feet.
Bullfrog, dragonfly, buttercup, snow lantern, vine maple, honeybee,
cloverhead, waterbug, moonlight: She wants this by moonlight.

Twenty Below - Paul Engle

Twenty below, I said, and closed the door,

A drop of five degrees and going down.

It makes a tautened drum-hide of the floor,

Brittle as leaves each building in the town.

I wonder what would happen to us here

If that hard wind of winter never stopped,

No man again could watch the night grow clear,

The blue thermometer forever dropped.

I hope, you answered, for so cruel a storm

To freeze remoteness from our lives too cold.

Then we could learn, huddled all close, how warm

The hearts of men who live alone too much,

And once, before our death, admit the old

Need of a human nearness, need of touch.