(Excerpt from Awaking in New York by Maya Angelou)                

The city drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war, lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.

We, as people sometimes wish to not go back,
back to that cruel,
cruel world.
Some days, it is beautiful,
others, you wish you had a place,
a place to go and hide.
Perhaps a rock,
or a cave.
But,
the thing is,
while you're hiding under that rock
or in that cave,
the world goes on
with you,
or
without you.
So,
the city must drag itself
awake.
No matter how they feel,
they know that they must go on
or else they may be forgotten.
The
city
must
go
on.
It must awake