"Buffalo Dusk" by Carl Sandburg

"If it ain't poetry, it's history." So said Carl Sandburg about his poem "Buffalo Dusk." To read that poem and to listen to an audio recording of Carl Sandburg reading that poem of his, click here.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

"New Farm Tractor" by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

This Remembrance Day (as they call it in Canada) is the tenth anniversary of the death of my father, who was a veteran American farmer. I dedicate this poem by American author Carl Sandburg to the memory of my father Hugh M. Gilmer (1914-2006), who grew up on a farm and who for most of his adult life was a full-time farmer. He never had a mule, Mr. Sandburg. But before he bought his first farm tractor, he did have two draft horses, a Belgian and a Percheron, that he used on his farm. He retired from farming at the age of 89.


NEW FARM TRACTOR
from Smoke and Steel (1920)
by Carl Sandburg

Snub nose, the guts of twenty mules are in your cylinders and transmission.
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.
It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.
The farm boy says hello to you instead of twenty mules -- he sings to you instead of ten span of
        mules.
A bucket of oil and a can of grease is your hay and oats.
Rain proof and fool proof they stable you anywhere in the fields with the stars for a roof.
I carve a team of long ear mules on the steering wheel -- it's good-by now to leather reins and the
        songs of the old mule skinners.

"Theme in Yellow" by Carl Sandburg

THEME IN YELLOW
by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.

(This poem, which is good for children, is in the public domain. It was first published in 1916.)

"Fog" by Carl Sandburg

Source: The Old Farmer's Almanac

FOG
by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then, moves on.


Source: Favorite Poems Old and New (1957), selected for boys and girls by Helen Ferris

"Lost" by Carl Sandburg : The Poetry Foundation

Read this poem by Carl Sandburg from the March 1914 issue of Poetry Magazine: Lost

Carl Sandburg : The Poetry Foundation