Summer Grass
Summer grass aches and whispers.
It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours
out wishes to the overhead stars.
The rain hears; the rain answers; the rain is slow
coming; the rain wets the face of the grass.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 23, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Summer Grass” was included in Carl Sandburg’s poetry collection Good Morning, America (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1928). As a foreword to the collection, Sandburg offers thirty-eight definitions of poetry, including, “Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.”
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime—the first in 1919 for his poetry collection Corn Huskers, the second in 1940 for his biography Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, and the third in 1951 for Complete Poems.