New Feet
[By Carl Sandburg, from Shenandoah in the
collection Cornhuskers]
Empty battlefields keep their phantoms.
Grass crawls over old gun wheels
And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple
Into Summer's southwest wind,
Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet,
Reaching a blossom in the rust of shrapnel.
© 1946 Carl Sandburg | All rights reserved
Used by permission of Houghton Harcourt Mifflin Publishing
|