Early Spring

Money courses through Chicago's veins like the essence urgingthe redbuds into
bloom, tulips made wiser by the memory of snow, template of April and the
daffodils paper-hung, bereft, the white whale of winter rendered unto fat. And
May, the grape hyacinth, apple blossom and the rain ruining the west-facing
azaleas while the north facing azaleas have yet to bloom. You can feel it pulsing
along the industrious avenues, viscid, luxuriant, explosively amoral-the old
neighborhood flush with it now, the industrial bakery-"Golden Hearth"-
torn down, sad tracts of mud and cinders behind barbed-wire, as if cairns of
crumbled brick required care and protection. Like an animal breathing, veins of
a leafrunning with sap, engine ofefulgence, resurgent, branches and limbs and
roots and blossoms, a force beyond reason, or ruthlessly reasonable.