Wing
"Readers may indeed take flight via Maureen Connolly's aptly titled volume, starting with excursions in "Reveries," a sentimental journey recalling the sweet past: salami sandwiches, her mother's almond-scented lotion, and "the warmth of the sun after loneliness"; and moving on to Chicago's well-known hospital and L trains.
"Cook County Hospital" recounts the Hellish birthing where "all labor together/In a fifty-foot-square room...Their groans/..a call and response - yet babies are birthed "trailing stardust." Little quirky humanity remains on the Green Line, once called the more descriptive Lake Street L, where real drivers called out the stops - her nod to nostalgia in "Riding the L" - two wildly contrasting rides.
Along the way, we make our way down the Illinois River toward the Mississippi, passing factory towns and silhouetted smokestacks, hop on a Harley, riding where "skinny white clouds/stretch across grey skies" and gaze at an artist's mural commemorating Nature's "fish, planets, a star birthing a star" in this collection celebrating stubborn survival and rebirth.
Whether boarding the L train of nostalgia or lying "naked on the curve of the earth," this Winged trip is well worth it.