Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Cornhuskers. 1918.

16. Localities

WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw

And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.

Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,

Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,

The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,

The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,

The straight drop of eight hundred feet

From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:

Men and places they are I never saw.

I have seen three White Horse taverns,

One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania,

One in a timber-hid road of Wisconsin.

I bought cheese and crackers

Between sun showers in a place called White Pigeon

Nestling with a blacksmith shop, a post-office,

And a berry-crate factory, where four roads cross.

On the Pecatonica River near Freeport

I have seen boys run barefoot in the leaves

Throwing clubs at the walnut trees

In the yellow-and-gold of autumn,

And there was a brown mash dry on the inside of their hands.

On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox County

I know how the fingers of late October

Loosen the hazel nuts.

I know the brown eyes of half-open hulls.

I know boys named Lindquist, Swanson, Hildebrand.

I remember their cries when the nuts were ripe.

And some are in machine shops; some are in the navy;

And some are not on payrolls anywhere.

Their mothers are through waiting for them to come home.