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Gunslingers and poets
By: Steve Joos

How strange it seems,
how lives are made
In different ways
on the same street.

Two men from neighboring towns,
just a few miles apart.
One a man of words,
one a frontier lawman.

One came from Galesburg,
and heard the rails,
following them north
to write of fog like cat's feet
and cities of big shoulders

To say that babies are God's way
of letting the world go on.
In verse like hyachinths and biscuits

One came from Monmouth
and traveled west to wear a star,
to make a land and be a
legend known near and far,
a little boy's hero.

One wrote of a great man
who spoke not far
from where the other was born.

They live on,
for better, for worse,
separated by a highway
and a place in time.