Picnic Boat

Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)



Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it
is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan.
A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach
farms of Saugatuck.
Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a
flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill.
Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping
in curves are loops of light from prow and stern
to the tall smokestacks.
Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a
hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses
playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

32 sec read
91

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFDGHEIJ
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 584
Words 107
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 12

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor best known for poetry. more…

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