That part of the country is, within itself,

            as unpoetical as any spot of the earth;

            but seeing it .  . . aroused feelings in me

            which were certainly poetry.

                                                --Abraham Lincoln

I.

That Lincoln practiced law not far from here

is a fact. You can visit the courthouse

where he stopped, even buy a postcard

in a dingy gift shop where, in tatters,

the same red-checked curtains hang

as they've hung for years.

II.

As a kid I rode my Schwinn Typhoon for miles,

making up stories in my head.

For the record, the Schwinn was black,

had playing cards clothespinned to its spokes

--so as to produce a fine, wicked chatter--

two rear baskets, and a horn that never worked.

But for years it was my good pony,

my palomino beauty. For miles I held the reins

of plastic handgrip--plastic streamers, mane.

Around here it is flat.

Some say, on a day without haze,

you can see all the way to Thomasboro,

all the way to the grain elevator

rising from plowed fields.

And on the clearest of these days

the long horizon line describes an arc,

becoming the curve of the earth.

New corn resolves itself into green ocean.

By all that's true, I am this country's fool,

for I too have heard the gulls scream overhead,

smelled salt air, and seen the solitary lighthouse

at Thomasboro rising from spring fields--

cylindrical, and cool, and real.