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Split Life

(12 February)

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Today is the birthday

Of Abraham Lincoln

Peer Kentuckian

Who finished growing up

Somewhere else

First Republican

And best

Sixteenth President

And we will argue

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Tall, wearing a beard because

Someone said it would

Look good

Splitter of rails

And he had other talents

Self-taught

Until he got to schools

Lawyer, legislator

Failed entrepreneur

Failed at many jobs

Not a success story

Until the one great thing

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Freer of slaves, though hardly alone

In that

Slavery should never

Have happened;

We’ve been paying for it ever since

Until together

We might march on

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Moderator of the Civil War

What a wicked way

To spend one’s fifties

Railed (another way)

Until an overwhelming victory

Came to pass

And then

To count the dead

And give them stones

Play “Dixie” on the White House lawn

Killed a few days later

(not for that)

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His remains buried back in

Springfield, Illinois

His body for the nation

His spirit unto judgment

Thence we hope

To paradise

And so it could be

For all

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C L Couch

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split-rail fence at Gettysburg

photograph by Jesse Lee Tucker – own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51840069

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