languisity
Day 345
I’m a reluctant admirer of Carl Sandburg. There is a gravity to his poetry I’d prefer not to like so much. But he writes lines that lodge in the mind like grit in an oyster, and you can’t help recalling them.
When I saw this photograph the poem Anna Imroth came to me unbidden, and the photo’s muted beauty took on the sad, dulcet ballast of Sandburg’s words.
Cross the hands over the breast here–so.
Straighten the legs a little more–so.
And call for the wagon to come and take her home.
Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and
brothers.
But all of the others got down and they are safe and
this is the only one of the factory girls who
wasn’t lucky in making the jump when the fire broke.
It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
