Writings & Photos

LANDSCAPE
See the trees lean to the wind’s way of learning.
See the dirt of the hills shape to the water’s way of learning.
See the lift of it all go the way the biggest wind and the strongest water want it.

I SANG

I sang to you and the moon

But only the moon remembers. I sang

O reckless free-hearted free-throated rhythms,

Even the moon remembers them

And is kind to me.

UNDER A TELEPHONE POLE

I am a copper wire slung in the air,

Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.

Night and day I keep singing – humming and thrumming:

It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and the want,

Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech,

In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and shine drying,

A copper wire.

Carl Sandburg was a poet, journalist, historian, and social activist who won three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime.

As the father of three daughters, Sandburg also wrote numerous children’s books.

For more on Sandburg’s life, career and writings, visit the National Park Service links shown below.

Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site’s Museum Collection

ROOTABAGA STORIES
BY
CARL SANDBURG

“Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”

“I glory in the world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.”

“It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness: to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask himself “Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?”

Writings & Photos

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