Biggest Little City in the World,
Blackjack dealers, Wild Horse wranglers,
A thoroughfare to Burning Man and Nation's Automobile Museum;
Windy, Wild, Waking,
Land of Hot August Nights;
They tell me you are hookers, gangs and casinos,and I have seen the headlines, so I know.
And they tell me you are desertland, and
I relish the lack of moisture in the dry desert air.
And they tell me you're a has-been, and I say:
I have seen it in the movies
painted as the Mos Eisely of Tatooine.
And having answered so I look at those
who kick dirt at my city, and I give
them back the dirt and say to them:
Come and show me another city resting resplendent
within a ring of mountain ranges,
resilient and relentless.
Abiding the angst of dire droughts and furious
floods, her people rally for their
neighbors and restore their principality;
Tender as a mother soothing her child to sleep,
protective as a soldier guarding his sovereign state
against the world,
Revealed,
Emerging,Growing,
Returning,
Ascending, abating, advancing,
Through the desert dust, bright lights
on alabaster cityscape, dazzling with
flashing brilliance
Through the perilous panes of possibility
dazzling as young dames dazzle,
Dazzling even as diamonds dancing on the
kept blue waters of Tahoe,
Sparkling and dazzling that through those waters flows the lifeforce of ages -
decades of dreams and daring emigrants,
Dazzling!
Dazzling the windy, wild, waking dazzle of the Dauntless, unfaltering, unshrinking, proud to be the
Biggest Little City, Blackjack dealers, Wild Horse wranglers, thoroughfare to Burning Man and Automobile Museum to the Nation.
Inspired by Carl Sandburg's poem Chicago
