Carl Sandburg watches working girls moving through downtown streets in the morning, carrying little newspaper-wrapped lunches on their way to shops and factories. The sight fills him with wonder—so many young women still bright with youth, laughter, and memories of dances, plays, and walks. But alongside them move older women, the “gray” stream in the same river, who have already lived through that promise and now know where the bloom and laughter go. Their feet move slower, and their faces carry wisdom instead of beauty. Sandburg compares the two groups to green and gray currents running side by side, creating a quiet, reflective mood—tender toward the young, respectful toward the old, and gently sad about time passing through ordinary working lives.
Working Girls — Summary
The working girls in the morning are going to work — long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of youngwoman life I feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays and walks.
Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and so here are always the others, those who have been over the way, the women who know each one the end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the clew, the how and the why of the dances and the arms that passed around their waists and the fingers that played in their hair.
Faces go by written over : " I know it all, I know where the bloom and the laughter go and I have memories," and the feet of these move slower and they have wisdom where the others have beauty.
So the green and the gray move in the early morning on the downtown streets.