Bronko's birthday

Bronko is 2 years old today. Celebrating with his big brother guinea pig, then wondering why Tanya--yes, male Tanya--must return to his cage (below the turtles):

courses golf and otherwise

golf provides more strokes

for those who need the practice most:

low score wins and those disposed

cut away a higher chance to

golf again.

I’m thinking of my friend—

that’s always code for self-protection,

if indeed we’re friends with self—

at any rate, we divot what

we will…

My friend requires a pan-

oply of strategies to say a job is done:

lick a finger, gauge the wind, truss

the glove that aids a trusty

swing, then

sing a song inside my head,

‘Fearless’ often comes to mind, Waters

likened to my friend, Gilmour aptly

fretting more, a similitude of

rock stars…

glaring at the rock. The ball

is now upon its tee. What opportunity

appears to be is also hit-and-miss.

I hear the cooing mourning

dove, now,

in the afternoon; I watch my

friend assemble self: clearly keep your

cool. No lessons can account for

a swing into ephemerality.

Swing low,

and divot what you can. Some

sweet chariot may intercept what you

have thrown, but most of all, the

ball is in the nether-known; it

flies alone.

My friend and I—let’s call each

other ‘caddy’—recover spans of well-

intentioned ground. Mulligan is

always ‘round: pride flies before

the storm.

God grant the
tee-times
fare so
well.

Kampa Island reprise

Fully fixing a car, with routers out and

a tripod for a workbench, two ostensible

tourists anchor the middle of Mala Strana

in the middle of our day. Maybe they had

taken in the craft display at Senat Dvůr;

maybe they had left an SOC at Lennon Wall,

held up by mere band-aids: “Kim Jong Un, plz

step down” to once again give peace a chance,..

 “and if you plz, our car has also broken down;

we’re strangely stranded here in paradise.”

The Kampa Island plan has jangled dogs running

rather free. The Pink Floyd David Černy babes are

crawling indiscriminately. The huge memorial tree

near the bust of Dobrovský umbrellas all and over

sees the serendipity: the fortressed playground,

the stray mechanics, Seifert’s lovers dialoguing free:

“Was it my forehead or my lips you kissed?” Surely it

was well beyond geography. And so we wander to the

Vltava and the sometime flooded statue of Harmony,

the meditation of Sri Chinmoy, a bohemian émigré.

“If you”—auto invalids—“can create harmony

in your own life,” if straining to make a melody,

“this harmony will enter into the vast world.” So

says Sri. It’s worth a walk through Kampa Park

to get to work on broken parts of ingenuity.

Marina

Ingots pass the Dubai day away,

rocketing to make Zamyatin’s We

a shadow of its predicatory ennui.

Some select the marina walkway

in a September bereft of breeze.

I took with me Tsvetayeva to be

a fellow passer-by; here she’d say

“think of me simply”—(yesterday,

now)—“and simply forget of me.”

Marina, I have no such disease.

I am among those folks who run

the plains and edges of the world;

visions, muse-like melodies swirl,

luring faux oases to a desert sun.

I needn’t plunge into the shoal.

Instead, I’ll walk marinas where

they lie and run among land lives.

Laborers amass in the city’s hives:

as fellow aliens, they might stare

to say ‘think of me’ in this hole.

Ingots that we are we’ll gravitate

to safeboxes & combination codes

to settle self-reliance. Our in-roads

imperceptible, the myriads await

a worthwhile tally of our worth.

It stands to reason, then, in Dubai

a reader of Tsvetayeva may barely

pass you by. A lizard brightly green

rustles leaves which whisper why  

we run to greater clods of earth.

The Shelf Builder

Greg Elstad - brother, uncle - wrote this poem in 2010, a few years after his marriage to Lola.  In light of contemporary shelf-building in the brotherhood, it would seem appropriate to add it here.

The Shelf Builder

        by Greg Elstad

This house was once home to a Swede we called Stan,
     Content to live here with no shelf building plan.
Stan and wife "Bunny" lived here a long span,
     Loving each other the most two folks can.'

"We've plenty of shelf space!" they said after a scan.
     (But their shelves were all full when their marriage began!)
"Anything extra goes in the trash can!
     Or we'll give it to Goodwill wrapped up in Saran."

Bunny & Stan moved to town by their plan,
     They gave us this house since we're part of their clan.
They gave us their Chevy - a really nice van.
    (Now we're thinking of selling our trusty sedan!)

Most of their stuff they left here when they ran.
     The shelves were all full when our move in began.
We've crowded our stuff in as best as we can.
     Now Lola prays this, again  & again:

"Dear God in Heaven, please revamp my man,
     To one who builds shelves just as fast as he can.
Do this for me and I'll be Greg's best fan,
     I won't scare him stiff with my Shelf Empire Plan!

Please don't make Greg like those men from Iran!
     You know the type - they're a very dark tan,
They mutter a lot of a shelf building ban.
     (They base their beliefs on their prophet's Koran.)

Make Greg a man who builds shelves with elan,
     Good shelves!  Not cheap ones like those from Japan!
Shelves for my dishes, and boxesof bran,
     And one shelf for storing things kept in a pan!"

Postscript: My poem is complete.  But. . . .
I've still got 4 words to use ending with "an":
     The pie nut - the fattening but tasty pecan.
The Indian tribe, river, or city - Cheyenne.
     My niece & my nephwe - Ms. Ann(ie) & Dan.

But this is our place!

Lie in tall grass

Look up at blue sky

Tractor is coming

Of course he’ll see me.

Hunters atop our hill

Cogitating their kill

I in brown jacket

Come to pay a call.

Oh deer.  They see me.

Is that what they think?

There is danger here

When I am center of universe.

     Marilyn Jaeger

Pump Organ - The Challenge

I’m never quite sure if the comments get circulated the way the regular posts do, so I’m going to post this twice, and share with everyone what I already sent Mom - how the whole time I read this I was thinking of another Tom Waits song, a sad sweet two minute instrumental that features a pump organ - or maybe it was a harmonium. Check out Tom's piece - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIWfRb4rbU4.  Anyway, I'll be sad to see that old pump organ go, and moreso now that we know it's story.

But I’m happy to have the chance to get the story.  And now, here’s a challenge to all, and this comes from Mom to me after I recently shared with her a bit of my own twelve year old story.  “Very good, son,” she said, “but let’s get everyone into this.”  My bit had been what I call a moleskin memoir, a 3x5 notebook full of my first homes in Minnesota and then Cook County, and I do look forward to sharing this.  But first, where were you when you were twelve and thirteen?  I’d love to hear from you all!

Pump Organ, the story

Pump organ, the story                                                       September 9, 2014, by Marilyn Elstad Jaeger

A  lovely old pump organ has had a location of prominence in our log cabin great room since 2005, but it goes a long way back in my history.  We moved to Franklin, Minnesota in 1952 when my father, George Elstad, became principal and band and choir director at Franklin High School.  I was thirteen.  This was not foreign territory for my parents.  Haakon and Marthea Elstad homesteaded near Central Lutheran Church, between Franklin and Fairfax, in 1869.  It was later known as the Distad farm.  My father’s mother – his birth mother Lena and his adoptive mother Mathilda (Lena’s sister) – grew up in Beaver Falls, just north of Redwood Falls, Minnesota.  Their father, Martin Jensen, was the sheriff of Renville County.  Mathilda married Ole Elstad in 1895.  My grandparents.

My mother, Berenice Loftness Elstad Ostrom, also had strong roots here.   Her grandparents were Einar (Hunsager) Nelson and wifeThea, who homesteaded right below Fort Ridgely on the Minnesota River in Nicollet County.   They were founders of the Ft.Ridgely and Dale Lutheran Church, located about six miles northwest of their farm.  The whole family knew of how well they regarded their pastor, Rev.  Rognlie.   Einar, 1829-1915, and Thea, 1840-1932, are buried in the cemetery at Ft. Ridgely and Dale Church.  Their third daughter, Palma, was born in 1873.  She was my grandmother.  Much of her early education was done in the home by parents and servants teaching homemaking skills.  According to family historian Elvina Loftness, “music was added after Grandfather purchased an organ.  As a result Palma became a part-time organist of the German Lutheran church where she served as a parish worker.”  Palma and Andrew Loftness, of Clear Lake township near Gibbon, Minnesota, were married in 1904 and moved to homestead in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

I believe that same organ that my great-grandfather Einar Nelson purchased for their Minnesota Valley home was the one that ended up in our home in Wisconsin in 2005!  For atop the organ in the back room of Ft. Ridgely and Dale was a stick with the name ”Nelson” written on it.

Fast-forward to the 1950’s.   On Sunday afternoon drives an occasional stop for our family was at the churches east of Franklin.  The doors were always open!   Dad would sit down at one of the pump organs in the musty little back room and play.  He was good; I am still aspiring to play the piano like he did.

A half-century later, in 2005, my husband Dick and I borrowed a flatbed trailer from a neighbor and drove from our rural home outside of Blanchardville, Wisconsin to pick up the three pump organs still in the back room of Ft. Ridgely and Dale.  Dick and I had re-discovered them some years before on a southern Minnesota journey.  We learned they now  belonged to Arnemann Grender and his sister Marie Grender Clark.  Their parents entertained musically, and their mother I think was a Rognlie.  The deal was we could have the organs if we fixed up one for Arnemann.

In 2006 Illinois friends of ours, Dan and LuAnn Detloff, came to visit.  Dan was a music professor at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines.  I asked him to assess the three organs, and he agreed with me that two were clearly beyond repair.  We salvaged stops and keys and woodwork but they were otherwise already falling apart.

The third organ, however, was in good shape.  But not playable.  Our local piano tuner told me about a man in Wilton, Wisconsin, Verne Kirchoff, who fixed old pump organs.  In the fall of 2006 Dick and I loaded it onto our pickup truck and drove the 103 miles up through winding roads and valleys to Wilton, between Tomah and LaCrosse.

Verne lovingly restored the organ and delivered it to us in June, 2007.  He had installed an electric motor but I asked him to remove it, preferring the original authenticity.  He replaced the carpet on the foot pedals.   He charged $600.  Along with the organ he brought pages from an old catalog describing it: Packard Style 485 “Humanola” Chapel Organ, 1891-1904, mfg. by Ft. Wayne Organ Company, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

It has been a fitting accessory to our log cabin, and played occasionally by grandchildren but seldom by me (should have kept that electric motor!)  None of the children have room for it, and eventually we will not be here.  It is time for the old Packard to return to its roots in southern Minnesota, and more specifically, to the Rognlie homeplace next to Ft. Ridgely and Dale Church.

Jackie Robinson West

I have appreciated reading your poems of late, Mom and Dan, especially in this busy period when I haven't had much time to comment or post otherwise.  It's always good, I find, to take time to simply read and enjoy a good poem, and I'm glad we have this place.

In that spirit, today I'd like to share a published poem from Mary Schmich, without her permission and hopefully with the Tribune's tolerance given our limited family audience, but in any case with much respect for the Trib’s well placed page 3 columnist in Mike Royko’s old spot.


A Poem to Our Boys of Summer —
Jackie Robinson West

by Mary Schmich


We'll line up on this Wednesday morn

Awaiting the parade

We'll come to give them one last cheer

And thanks for how they played.

.

By "they" I mean the team of boys

Who stirred Chicago's pride

A team with grit and heart and skill

And raised on our South Side.

.

Some players were not 5 feet tall

Each one was still a kid

But now the world has heard their name

And knows just what they did.

.

Their name was Jackie Robinson

(To which they added West)

They showed their namesake — 42 —

They'd give his game their best.

.

For two weeks of our summertime

They gave us all a lift.

Amid the worries of the world

They landed like a gift.

.

In parks and bars and living rooms

We sat and watched them win

(We helped them give a ratings gift

To dear ESPN.)

.

And what a gift to Rahm as well!

Big news that's not a downer!

They even scored a bunch of tweets

From Durbin, Quinn and Rauner.

.


They made the Cubs look Little League

They made the Sox look old

From North to South, we loved these boys

Decked out in blue and gold.

.

Luster, Benton, Radcliff too

Plus Hondras, Noble, King

These little heirs to Robinson

They made the old game sing.

.

Ed Howard, Butler, Jackson, Green

Plus Houston, Bufford, Jones

These 13 boys, they played like men

With all their hearts and bones.

.

They clobbered Lynnwood, Washington,

Then whomped poor Philly — yay!

(Although it was a wee bit sad

To see them beat Mo'Ne.)

.

Nevada stomped them once, and then

They swallowed their distress

They marched back on the field and left

As champs of the U.S.

.

So what if in the final match

They lost the game to Seoul?

They made our fractured city seem,

For just a moment, whole.

.

Some said it was a fairy tale

The way they beat the odds

But this was not a fairy tale

And not the work of gods.

.

The boys of Jackie Robinson

Are in the end just boys

They're kids who learned to win and lose

And focus through the noise.

.

They showed what work and hope can do

With coaches there to guide

With help from friends and family who

Know work is key to pride.

.

They might not change Chicago

And they will not end its woes.

Our troubles and our worries

Carry on, and so it goes.

.

Though 67 years have passed

Since Robinson broke through

And breached the baseball color line

There's still a lot to do.

.

The problems of the city,

Its divisions and its fears

Will still be here tomorrow

When we're finished with the cheers.

.

But when they ride up Aberdeen

And north on Halsted Street

The heirs to Jackie Robinson

Will give us something sweet.

.

For one more day we'll get the chance

To all be one big team

For one more day we'll get the chance

To witness that great dream.

.

Then when the cheers are over and

When all the fanfare's done

There's just this final thing to say:

You sure made summer fun.




mschmich@tribune.com
Copyright © 2014, Chicago Tribune

Designer

DESIGNER

Designer jeans – now that’s a concept.

Wear them in the rugged

The rugged outdoors.

Where the first designer had more fun

Than we can wrap our mortal minds around.

Old question: how can one not believe

Looking at the design, harmonic, extravagant?

Colors blending and clashing, flamboyant.

Scents beyond Chanel, Tabu and Old Spice.

Powder-puff bunny tails, scrawny-necked turkeys

And three graceful wary deer I couldn’t have put together

No, not in a million years – or a day.

A-theist?  No-God.  And this body, this mind

Can say, “it’s happenstance.  Accident of nature?”

Oh give me a home in the psalms, or in Job.

“What is man?”  “Where were you when..?”

Designer, architect, arborist, weaver,

Planner, even, of designer jeans.

Marilyn Jaeger, August 22, 2014, after a country walk

Indian Summer Foretold

Days before Indian Summer drag like Andrei Tarkovsky films,

and, if you’ve seen them, you know they more than drag—they

demand a dreamlike going-there, no turning back: from Ivan’s

non-Childhood to Nostalgia’s smoldering wick.  They troll what

freedom might have spent. They toll some Rublev bells untold.

And, growing somewhat old, I gather more in Indian Summers

than ever hoped before. My children speed their step as August

reaps whatever store—they’re in it more for the shine and rut

that Autumn brings, the září and řijen that beckons fawns to be

young bucks and does. So the story goes: youth re-ruts the old.

The European Athletic Championships run while I think it out:

a race that pits a Russian and Ukrainian seems naturally remiss.

Black Panther punch one and another!—you’re doing it no less

in facebook wars… But these young athletes have much more in

mind than redressing petty politics, opting for some fools’ gold.

Their parents both saw Tarkovsky films, for instance, Sacrifice,

and now, in days before the summer ends, a hope would be that

all can see we’ve come too far for cold war land grabs and dog-

days’ growl for veranda scrawl symposia—we all must ruminate

the line between some entitled sense of being….and being bold.

To my mind, there’s little choice. The world has falsely thrived

on lack of ethical sacrifice. Those who’ve had a lot in life may be

a mewling sort: their meat has safely come from some provide,

and ‘old dogs/new tricks’ may not translate far and wide. To the

point, we purchase souls that are probably far from being sold.

And there the poem can end. Who really cares, after all, where

poems begin and end? Who understands where Indian Summer

days, if they have a feigning chance to (in our immigrant minds)

begin? Tarkovsky—Russian Swede, Italian eye-piece for days in

dancing need—pell-mell rounds up sheep to field a better fold.

And that is where any Indian Summer (in advance) should go—

Leave the predisposed and concentrate, in temperance, to that

which needs a better fold. There’s no source here but the Gospel

Luke: ‘Physician, heal thyself’—the tautology upends itself—so

we’ll fall to autumn leaves that jockey not for soil predisposed,

and rather fall as Luke and others may not have easily foretold.

Much the point of Jesus’ ministry is being in a place where earth

conditions are both at hand and not-to-be-believed: who’d see

a blind man gaining sight with a paste of mud? Or Lazarus rising

arbitrarily? No one would see. And thereby we are humbly told.

And so my Indian Summer, in advance, is adequately foretold.

Filling Up the Jukebox

Good List, Dan, and Good Idea on how to revive S2L2A&A with a theme variation.  I will follow suit with my own favorite turn to artist, another not as great as the Beatles or the Floyd, perhaps, but one whom I can truly listen to agin and agin.  As my kids will tell you.

But first, on Zep.  Check out last month's Mojo Magazine, where a top 50 Led Zep list is presented.  Some of their favorites not on your list: Since I've Been Loving You (#6), Achilles Last Stand (#8), Ramble On (#9), Good Times Bad Times (#14), Heartbreaker (#18) and In my Time of Dying (#19).  And their #20, which I might have raised to top 5: Friends.

My turn to artist is Tom Waits, of course.  I first discovered Tom through a literary reference in an Omni Magazine short story in 1977: God Is An Iron, by Spider Robinson.  That was all I knew of Waits for years, but it was enough to add a note of familiarity when I read favorable reviews of Swordfishtrombone in 1983.  I went out and bought this, loved it, and, prompted again by Robinson's specific quotes, sought out Blue Valentines.  I saw Tom in concert in 1984, and since then I've bought every one of his albums.

The songs to listen to again and again:

$29.00 (Thanks Spider)
Frank's Wild Years (best short story song ever)
Picture in a Frame (from my first list)
Step Right Up (best early Waits)
Johnsburg, Illinois (my favorite croon until Picture came along)
Hold On (Springsteenesque)
House Where Nobody Lived (my 2011 resonant song)
Chocolate Jesus (irreverent, but not really)
Somewhere (I sung this drunk on the streets of Galena one night)
Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis (Tom roleplaying a female hooker will bring a tear to your eye)
Clap Hands (the Rain Dogs kicker)
Get Behind the Mule (the rift line is infectious)
Hell Broke Luce (with a boost from Keith Richards)
Ol' 55 (covered by the Eagles, but Tom's voice makes it cool)
16 Shells from a Thirty Odd Six (from Swordfish, not to be confused with...)
Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun (from Blue Valentine, the best sweet-blue album out there)
Gin Soaked Boy (again from Swordfish, not to be confused with...)
Jockey Full of Bourbon (from Raindogs, to complete one of the best 1-2 albums you'll ever find)
Swordfishtrombone (just the word, to get you started)
In the Neighborhood (one more from Swordfish, now go out and discover him!)

beyond eclectic predelictions and epochs 'ten years gone'

So I think I figured it out: Led Zeppelin by anyone’s measure will always be the 3^rd best band behind (take your pick) the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Aerosmith, Dylan & co, anything having to do with Jeff Beck, The Kinks, Elvis Costello, etc, etc,

And in a delightful family debate whether “All of My Love” belongs in Led Zeppelin’s top 10 or top 20, I’ve come to realize that this band (like the Beatles, like Pink Floyd) is beyond such lists. They combine Chicago blues with various covers that far excel the originals with ample originality—no one stoked the top three on my list but themselves. The echo justifiably is that Pink Floyd and the Beatles recorded NO SUCH covers—they played themselves and no others. Indeed, this is a musicological quandary, on par with the debate that Sophocles without ‘Ur-texts’ exceeds Shakespeare with his ample supply of Ur-Hamlets and such. Of the more-than-ten Led Zeppelin songs I list below, plenty of them are ‘ur’—the Rolling Stones would nod their heads empathetically. But they are great in a Shakespearean way. But certainly ten of these would never have existed except that Page/Plant/Bonham/Jones made them happen indigenously.

Ten Years Gone

Kashmir

The Immigrant Song

When the Levee Breaks

The Rover

Mountain Misty Hop

Over the Hill and Far Away

Going to California

Whole Lotta Love

Four Sticks

The Rain Song

Babe I’m Gonna Leave You

Dazed and Confused

All of My Love

No Quarter

Carouselambra

Stairway to Heaven

Black Dog

Battle for Evermore

Dancing Days

That’s the Way

Yes, that’s 21 songs on a STLTA&A list, but would anyone really deny #21? It makes me cry more than probably any of the far better songs above it. There is no genius in Page and Plant—there is genius in the God that made them. And since this band is so prone to covers, I think they’d not disagree. I’d listen to many lists agin and agin, but this focused journey crumbled me in ways no other source did—I’ll keep them 3^rd for sanity’s sake, but gosh they are far more than listenable for such evaluations, and, to anchor the point, “Ten Years Gone” was never more resonant to me than after Josh’s encouragement to tune it in before the turn of this millennium. It remains the absolute best motif/riff/subtle verse/bridge/jazz and jam solo/back to underappreciated riff. Concerts wouldn’t relay this song nearly as successfully as songs down the list, but ‘agin and agin’ implies the advent of record players and luxurious return. Led Zeppelin invites this as well as any musician, and the exercise alone to validate ‘agin and agin’ confirms our need to listen to compositions in their ‘on-offs’, and then again in their lure to be heard, well, again and again…. Led Zeppelin has done that more than just this extraordinary summer.

Eager to hear from others…

Daddy, what's it called

Before this poem begins, which by accident of 'octopus predictions' qualifies for Lost Menagerie, I should contextualize my recent rash of poems. Our first official day of the teaching year 2014-15 began today favorably, if in the sorrow of news: many of our students are from Ukraine and Russia, Kurdistan, Israel, Arab states; a dear colleague Karen Ercolino lost her mother last week after burying her father last spring; Robin Williams featured for several years in English 9 as the 'Dead Poets Society' voice of reason and subversion--and now this man is dead. Technically, my own kids Joey, Ben and Em are happily being Bohemian in the non-connected woods of Krkenose and Romania, so they aren't actually asking the questions of the poem below. But--poetic liberties presiding--I feel they'd parlay in such a spirit. The poem begs more than it's title:

                Daddy, what's it called

Daddy, what’s it called when everyone and no one sees what’s coming?

September Eleventh? Pimples on prom night? Amputation of the Invisible Hand? German dominance in the ‘beautiful game’? The debunking of octopus predictions? ISIS? Irrelevance of social networks? Relevance of walks in woods? The death of Robin Williams?

Say that last again…

The death of—

Don’t you mean ‘Awakenings’?

The film?

The attempt to massage the living dead to a status that matters, drugs or no drugs,…

Drugs or no drugs?

Dead or not dead—you said Robin Williams—

Yes, I did

This isn’t a parlor game, I hope

Google search destroyed that bit of fun

Robin Williams dead

He was bouncing off the walls

And sometimes made me laugh

He quoted poets wide and deep

And sometimes made me cry

His movies rarely satisfied

And one would think that doubt would add some weight into his sink

Shazbot!

Who’s speaking at this point?

You know—don’t dissemble now

Dad?

Don’t worry—I’m not awakening now

What? wake up!

I’m full awake. And well aware of how one lies insensate.

Can’t we get back to pimples on prom night?

Of course we can. That, in fact, is what all soulful clowns redact.

Redact?

A greater term than react. What’s it called when—

no one sees what’s coming?

Yes—what’s that called?

It’s called a need to sometimes have a dad

Skyline Tectonics

Growing up, the Chicago skyline

demanded imagination: my dad arched

his Midwestern back to sell us on Sears—what

my kids would call Willis, stepping out

on the 103^rd in suspended boxes,

seeking reconnaissance of John Hancock,

once the signature of all heavenly architecture,

trumping the Empire State for the claim

until stark Standard Oil marbled

the score: Chicago now towered beyond

its own dreams. Malaysia, meanwhile, Shanghai

and the Burj Khalifa Dubai would coolly

upend the scene: maybe Midwest

Asian dads had due reason to bend their

backs Myrtle-the-Turtle style (blast all the burp)

and maybe Chicago needed a boost to get

back on its track: enter Trump—a

ludicrous way to get politics done, a name

that does nothing good to no one, even Ivana his

erstwhile bride—she’ll do just fine waiting

in line for the bail when the bedrock

breaks. And it will, whether this millennium

or the next. As middle child (here see me Trump)

deflecting the lightning that’s bound to seek

wise old John Hancock & Willis anew,

I’m out of the Loop—these towers don’t do

anything to a Midwestern brother who gallivants

in and tiptoes out, quick-as-white-lightning,

to let the new skyline speak for itself:

Trump has his attention, but notably nature

draws double the bolt to the north and the south:

Willis and Hancock are duly recharged, and

Dad (in his grave) can relax his back.

Chicago has honored its volts,

and skyscrapers all are

blips to our notes.