Momma did not shoot Abraham Lincoln.
She did not abduct him into the slavery
He would free others from. She just saw his
Photograph and fell in love because
Her father was a boy in Sweden while
Abe was going on.
History is not a muzzle on the mouth.
It has room for the succinct and the lonely.Momma loved the kindly power of his face
And the way his hair sought to couple with
The eternal. She didn’t have to slide in the mud
Of Pennsylvania Avenue or hear the distractions
A carriage could bring to know he had wisdom
Surpassing the bayonets he had launched
Or the oratory he had mastered was more
Than the totality of his penetrated head.She just had to understand the words
Hallowed ground
Insofar as they concerned the country
Where she had not been born and
The fearful distance she had swum
Solely to arrive as Momma
On the shores of a new continent,
A stovepipe hat laughing on her own battered head.
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