Under a Telephone Pole

I am a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing—humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want,
Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech, 5
In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying,
A copper wire.

Carl Sandburg > Other days > Chicago Poems