'Shoe Shine Boy' Poem by Linda Winchell

Chicago train station, midst their porcelain tunnels
You would hear this young voice cry.
' Shine! ', 'Fifty cents! '
As daily commuters rushing home would pass on by.

Sitting on a shoeshine box
In the cold dim of this porcelain maize.
While down a bit, was a man who would sit
and on his torn violin, some old time tunes he'd play.

These sounds are as I remember them
of an era long now passed.
While at that time, I thought these days
cries of a shoe shine boy
and violin old time music would last.

How naive was I then, to have ever thought this way
for all eventually will fade from view.
I shall always remember, the cries of the shoe shine boy
and the violins oldtime songs, of the Chicago that I knew.