Fog

Carl Sandburg 1878-1967

Chicago Poems 1916

FOG

THE FOG comes
on little cat feet.

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


Yesterday, Mother's Day, Chicago had a high probability of rain. The rain stayed away, but the fog rolled in. The John Hancock building, and much of the city, was enveloped in a thick fog for most of the day. As I looked out my window, Carl Sandburg came to mind. I read some of his Chicago Poems in anthologies while in school. Anyone who lives in Chicago has heard of the city referred to as the "city of the big shoulders," a line from his poem, Chicago :

CHICAGO

HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

He went on to write Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, and he received a Pulitzer Prize for the work. Some additional information about Sandburg's life can be found here.