Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg with guitar - National Historic Site, North Carolina

Every Tuesday, I work at a very understated school named after Carl Sandburg. It is my side job, where I improvise piano songs for dance classes through Tanner Dance's Arts in Education (AIE) program. Apparently, I was "called" to work there specifically by the AIE program director, since she felt I would relate to the kids better than the other musicians. I am not sure what she meant, but it is probably because of my counseling background. 

Anyhow, I have grown to love this little school, out in the middle of nowhere (well, nowhere that anyone would label significant). I did not even have to look up Carl Sandburg to see who he was, before I noticed that one of Sufjan Stevens' brilliant songs had *Carl's name in the sub-title of a track, as well as mention of him in the song. Obviously, it was on his album about Illinois. 

*	(Track 3: "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" (Part I: The World's Columbian Exposition – Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream)

Not too long after that, I was obsessed with Joni Mitchell for a good many months, and during this interview (May 9, 2005), she listed Carl Sandburg as one of two poets she actually liked (and did not consider narcissistic): "I guess there are a few poets I like, though, like E. J. Pratt and Carl Sandburg." 

So there you have it -- Carl Sandburg just has to be someone I need to meet in the next life, if there is an afterlife that exists in a way we can do that! Perhaps . . . 

. . . perhaps I am meeting him now, and now is both past lives and after lives. It certainly feels that way with recent connections I have made and synchronicity I have encountered. 

Here is the poem I felt would apply to this day, in my life's love story and in the fabric of life for anyone seeking a little love . . . 

At a Window

Related Poem Content Details

BY CARL SANDBURG

Give me hunger, 

O you gods that sit and give 

The world its orders. 

Give me hunger, pain and want, 

Shut me out with shame and failure 

From your doors of gold and fame, 

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! 

But leave me a little love, 

A voice to speak to me in the day end, 

A hand to touch me in the dark room 

Breaking the long loneliness. 

In the dusk of day-shapes 

Blurring the sunset, 

One little wandering, western star 

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. 

Let me go to the window, 

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk 

And wait and know the coming 

Of a little love.