by Madeline Hall

It’s enough to make you cry,

the beauty of the windmills in Indiana,

the dulled gray collecting on the horizons of

thousands of fields of corn,

indistinguishable Illinois save for the city.

Home, yes, in theory,

and persistently in the heart;

(for every grumble on the origin of I,

there exists a fleeting stab of pride).

There’s a nostalgia, too,

(if the young can truly reminisce),

wrapping itself around every song and curve in the street.

The house on the corner halts my heart, quick,

and without fail,

and I will miss that as much as you can miss

the sense of your organs failing.

But there’s that awful old to confront, too;

there’s the undeniable age of the adult,

and those undercurrents of the end imminent.

Giants of the Glen will cease, soon,

and it’s everything they say about going home.