Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, monday morning rail,
fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
three conductors, twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound Odyssey
the train pulls out of Kankakee
and rolls along past houses, farms and fields,
passing trains that have no name
and freight yards full of old black men
and the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.
Good morning America, how are ya?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done