Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IOWA, by MAURICE MORRIS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IOWA, by                    
First Line: Flat as is pancake, fertile as can be
Last Line: Coin, clarinda, holstein -- go, and call the cows.
Subject(s): Iowa


Flat as is pancake, fertile as can be,
All the way from Keokuk to Calliope;
Corn that kisses cloudlets when its tassels wave,
Land that laughs a harvest where the reapers shave.

Sing a song of mountains to Iowa's fame!
You will find there AEtna -- anyway, in name --
Then too there is Lehigh (accent "high" of course),
Maple Hill, and Morning Sun mounts up perforce.

Early in the action, long before Des Moines
Took thought to its cubits, girded up its loins,
There was Cedar Rapids, there was Muscatine,
There was Maquoketa, Calamus, Exline.

Sing a song of hamlets of Iowa fair --
Audubon, Elkader, Larah, Tara, Clare,
Anita, Stuart, Shambaugh, Casey, Imogene,
Pella, Pocahontas, Packwood gild the scene.

Run along the top line -- Swea, Mona, Rake --
Or if you prefer it, then the western take,
Where the old Big Muddy swirls its browns and buffs,
Twisting from Sioux City down past Council Bluffs.

Sing a song of streamlets, spreading like a fan --
Little Sioux Creek, Sheel Rock, Wapsipinican,
Floyd, Nishnabatana -- syllables have sunk
In the ears that hear them -- Raccoon, Hoyer, Skunk.

You can go to Harvard or to College Springs;
You can go to Persia, though you have no wings;
You can go to Lisbon, Tripoli and Rome,
But somehow you'll find them very much like home.

Come! a foreign chanson of Iowa trill --
Albion, Moravia, Batavia, Brazil,
Hamburg and Manila, Geneva and Peru,
Even a Virginia, a Virginia News.

There is Promise City, Sac and Story too;
Bonaparte, Marengo -- yes, and Waterloo;
There is old Ottumwa, What Cheer, Swaledale -- lush!
Adel, Waukee, Ollie, Oelwein -- needs no bush.

Thus we sing Iowa -- Ida Grove, Calmar,
Soldier, Marne, Kalona, Gray, Dubuque, Kamrar,
Odebolt, Galva, Washta, Coggon, Rudd, Diff, Dows,
Coin, Clarinda, Holstein -- go, and call the cows.





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