Carl Sandburg

Choose ~ by Carl Sandburg

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The Clenched Fist or the Open Hand: Carl Sandburg’s Timeless Choice for Modern Times

Every human encounter begins with a silent, decisive posture: do we arrive prepared to fight, or ready to connect?

Choose

Carl Sandburg

THE single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

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Carl Sandburg’s “Choose” distills human interaction into an elemental fork in the road: confrontation or vulnerability. Written decades ago, these four lines hold an urgent mirror to our modern social landscape.

In a culture increasingly defined by digital outrage, rigid ideological divides, and defensive cynicism, our collective default often skews toward the clenched fist. We armor ourselves before dialogue even begins, primed to strike, retaliate, or guard our turf. Yet Sandburg’s genius lies in framing posture as destiny: the posture you adopt determines the nature of the meeting. The fist guarantees conflict, while the open hand invites reciprocity.

Extending the open hand is not an act of passivity or weakness. In fact, it requires radical courage to step forward unarmored, acknowledging mutual humanity in an anxious world. Every conversation, relationship, and public debate hinges on this quiet, immediate decision. Ultimately, we produce the exact world we brace for.

As you read this poem, ask yourself: When you step into difficult conversations today, are you truly extending an open hand to understand, or are you tightening your fist before the other person even speaks?

Let Love Go On ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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The Timeless Struggle of Love vs. Time: A Reflection on Carl Sandburg’s “Let Love Go On”

In a world governed by strict schedules and endless digital distractions, Carl Sandburg’s “Let Love Go On” arrives like a thunderbolt, reminding us of the one force capable of defying the relentless ticking of the clock.

Let Love Go On

Carl Sandburg

LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.
 
Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.
 
Let the love of this hour go on; let all the oaths and children and people of this love be clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.
 
Time is a young man with ballplayer legs, time runs a winning race against life and the clocks, time tickles with rust and spots.
 
Let love go on; the heartbeats are measured out with a measuring glass, so many apiece to gamble with, to use and spend and reckon; let love go on.

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Reflection

Carl Sandburg’s “Let Love Go On” is a fierce, uncompromising manifesto for the human heart. Sandburg paints time not as a gentle stream, but as a relentless predator—armed with an “ax and a hammer,” sliding through life with a master-key. Time always wins the physical race, leaving rust, spots, and spent heartbeats in its wake.

Yet, instead of surrendering to despair, the poem issues a radical command: love anyway. Sandburg urges us to pour out the love of this hour until the “last blood [is] gone.”

In our contemporary lives, we often hoard our emotional energy. We ration our vulnerability, waiting for the “perfect” moment or fearing the inevitable end. Sandburg challenges this modern caution. He invites us to gamble our measured heartbeats on deep connection, striving for a love that remains as “clean as a washed stone under a waterfall in the sun.” In an era of transient digital bonds and hyper-efficiency, “Let Love Go On” is a call to rebellion. It reminds us that while we cannot defeat time, we can transfigure it by loving fiercely, extravagantly, and without reservation in the present moment.

As you read this poem, ask yourself:

In what ways are you holding back your emotional energy out of fear of the future, and how can you choose to “let love go on” in your life today?

Wind Song ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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The Wisdom of the Wind: Learning Life’s Lessons in Silence and Motion

Carl Sandburg’s “Wind Song” reminds us that peace isn’t found by resisting life’s winds, but by listening to its music.

Wind Song

Carl Sandburg

LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, “Who, who are you?”
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
  Who, who are you?
  
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?

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Carl Sandburg’s “Wind Song” captures the profound art of surrender and listening. In his orchard of wind and whispers, he finds a quiet teacher—the wind itself. The poem invites us to hear what is often unheard: the gentle language of movement, rest, and release. Sandburg’s “sleep lesson” isn’t about slumber; it’s about learning to rest in the world as it is, letting go of the need to control what naturally flows.

When was the last time you paused long enough to hear life’s “wind song”? What did it whisper to you?

Our Prayer of Thanks ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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Our Prayer of Thanks

Carl Sandburg

For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
         evening on the weeds at the river,
    Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and
         bareheaded in the summer grass,
    Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white
         arms that hold us,
    Our prayer of thanks.

    God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles
         on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war
         days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are
         forever deaf and blind and lost,
    Our prayer of thanks.

    God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and
         the system; and so for the break of the game and
         the first play and the last.
    Our prayer of thanks.

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From the Shore ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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Courage in the Storm: What Carl Sandburg’s “From the Shore” Teaches Us About Bravery

Sandburg’s lone bird does not retreat from the storm—it embraces it. What if our courage, too, is born in the winds that batter us?

From the Shore

Carl Sandburg

A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeur’s and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.

Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.

Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.

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Joy ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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Let Joy Take You: Carl Sandburg’s Fierce Call to Live Fully
Joy isn’t meant to be tiptoed around—it’s meant to be seized, clutched, and embraced until it shakes your ribs.

Joy

Carl Sandburg

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere—
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.

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Reflection:

Carl Sandburg’s Joy is not a polite suggestion—it’s a command to grab joy with both hands before it slips away. The poem’s imagery moves from the lighthearted to the visceral, showing joy as something that can strike deep, even painfully, yet still sustain and energize us. The Apache dancer’s grasp is not gentle, but urgent—just as life’s moments of joy often demand our full, unhesitating embrace. Sandburg warns us against “the little deaths”—those small, soul-numbing surrenders to apathy, routine, or fear. His is a call to live not halfway, but all the way, even if joy, in its intensity, overwhelms us. It’s an invitation to be shattered open, not closed off—to risk the beautiful pain of living wide awake.

Three Questions to Dive Deeper:

  1. What are your “little deaths,” and how can you avoid letting them steal your vitality?
  2. When was the last time you held onto joy with the urgency Sandburg describes?
  3. How might embracing joy “smash you to the heart” in a way that transforms your life?

Choose ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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Choose

Carl Sandburg

THE  single clenched fist lifted and ready,
  Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
         Choose:
  For we meet by one or the other.

Source

Joy ~ A Poem by Carl Sandburg

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Joy

Carl Sandburg

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer
Clutches his woman.
I have seen them
Live long and laugh loud,
Sent on singing, singing,
Smashed to the heart
Under the ribs
With a terrible love.
Joy always,
Joy everywhere—
Let joy kill you!
Keep away from the little deaths.

Source

Poem for Today ~ Home

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Home

Carl Sandburg

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:

I heard it in the air of one night when I listened

To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry

in the darkness.

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Today’s Poem ~ I Am The People, The Mob

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I Am The People, The Mob
Carl Sandburg
I AM the people–the mob–the crowd–the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then–I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool–then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob–the crowd–the mass–will arrive then.

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