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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PLANKED WHITEFISH by CARL SANDBURG LONG ISLAND SOUND by EMMA LAZARUS THE PHANTOM SHIP by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE LAST CAESAR, 1851-1870 by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH MUSIC OF NATURE by E. JUSTINE BAYARD |