Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid
in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an
eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an
eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the
serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.


About this poem
"Still Life" was published in Carl Sandburg's book "Cornhuskers" (H. Holt & Co., 1918).

About Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Ill., in 1878. He published numerous books of poetry and won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. Sandberg died in Flat Rock, N.C., in 1967.

***
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


This poem is in the public domain. Distributed by King Features Syndicate