[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 10964-10965]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       A POEM BY MR. ROBERT DANA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DAVID LOEBSACK

                                of iowa

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 28, 2009

  Mr. LOEBSACK. Madam Speaker, as mentioned in my one-minute speech 
regarding Robert Dana, I submit one of his poems.

                   A Short History of the Middle West

                            (By Robert Dana)

     Under this corn,
     these beans,
     these acres of tamed grasses,
     the prairie still rolls,
     heave and trough,
     breaker and green curl,
     an ocean of dirt tilting and tipping.
     Its towns
     toss up on the distance, your distance,
     like the wink of islands.
     And the sky
     is a blue voice
     you cannot answer for.
     The forked and burning wildflowers
     that madden
     the ditches
     nod without vocabulary.
     Your neighbor
     is out early this morning-the air
     already humid as raw diamond.
     Drunk or lonely,
     he's scattering large scraps of white
     bread for the birds
     as if it were winter.
     He'd give you the sour undershirt off

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     his back--
     sweet, bad man.
     Does he remember
     rain salting down from that flat, far shore
     of clouds
     slowly changing
     its story?

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