jet plane view [rewrite]

Flying into Chicago at night,
the lights of the city spread out below.
Bright street lights trailing off into the distance,

streets, lit up for the night.

Like holiday lights strung towards each horizon,
their parallel lines getting small in the distance.
The grid, like some kind of game board,
glowing bright amber and white
against the dark velvet surface.
A perfect semetry, broken only by
the black patches of forest preserve,
the meandering river,
the wide curves of the Skyway
and the expanse of black that is the lake.
Street upon street of homes,
as far as the eye can see,
lit for the evening.

Familiar thoughts emerge,
thoughts of evening travel,
hitchhiking from place to place.
Looking out of passenger side windows,
looking into the lighted living rooms
of homes that I passed in the night.
Seeing people talking, conversing,
reading newspapers, watching the tube, living life.

What are those lives? What is in their orbit?
What is their workaday world?
What answers to my questions do they have?

And what of the living room windows?
who are the friends of these people?
more home fires and more small worlds.
each person's sphere intersecting with still others.
All of the thousands of places in this city.

Looking down from the sky from my jet plane view.
The thousands of stories in these lives.

I fly on my route, I see hundreds of cities,
thousands of lighted houses,
thousands of car headlights heading for those homes.

This human machine, repeats all across this country,
and over into the next, to engulf the world with people.