Where he Wayfaring Stranger called home

This poem was inspired by a visit to a county historical museum exhibit on Burl Ives.

He was a poor, wayfaring stranger



travelling through this world of woe,



but even poor, wayfaring strangers



need a place that they call home.





For him, twas in Southern Illinois



in a city that wasn't one,



and the nearby bigger city,



and county claimed him as its own.





Here the great old white-haired songbird



cam of age, but before he was the wayfaring stranger,



did Big Daddy make his first million as the Grit boy?





The stranger covered lots of ground,



sometimes a holly-jolly snowman



his name synonomous with the Yuletide,



sometimes a blustering antebellum patriarch



or a thundering western baron



feuding endlessly over the Big muddy.





Sometimes a bold champion of justice



for an hour each third Sunday.





In the city near the Stranger's boyhood home,



his songs are slightly remembered in the back room



of the local library,



amid the old ladies' hats and the cigar sign



from the lost railroad hotel.



Where even the old record albums look modern.