I look out at Jackson Park.
Where elms and oaks, locusts and maples
now stand arching over grassy spaces,
guarding beds of daffodils and pansies and petunias,
coleus and daisies.
This was water not so long ago.
When Lincoln’s funeral train traveled on the tracks
a few yards to the west,
—on its way to Chicago, where he lay in state—
it traversed a bridge over the water.
We have photographs to prove it.
Landfill, we call it.
I’m looking through the window
of a grand hotel, built in the 1890s
to greet the hordes that came to a World’s Fair.
The Fair was reason enough
To transport soil from Lake Michigan’s bottom
to form the park
and erect the buildings where I live today
and house the cafe where I sit now to reflect,
with the dogs and squirrels and grasshoppers,
who play beneath the trees.
My park, my companions,
my natural history.
(c) Phil Hefner 11 July 2018
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