an ocean and a sky

The president quoted Carl Sandburg yesterday,
and I had to share the end of the poem, Prairie.

Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: “Any new songs for me? Any new songs?”
O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting—your lover comes—your child comes—the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back—
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley. .    .    .	130
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water. .    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.	135
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
only an ocean of to-morrows,
a sky of to-morrows.	140
I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
at sundown:
To-morrow is a day.

via {bartleby}
photo via {pinterest}