Localities

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.