Welcome back to the daily poem here in the Close Roots Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by a Kentucky poet named Maurice Manning. He was born in 1966.

And his first collection of poems was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award, and that was actually chosen by the famous poet, W.S. Merwin.

He is currently a English and creative writing teacher

at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.

The poem that I'm gonna read today is from a collection,

which is forthcoming, actually.

It's a collection called a rail Splitter. And the whole collection is

from the perspective of Abraham Lincoln, actually. That was a nickname for him, Rail Splitter,

during his presidential campaigns. And the perspective of the poems is Abraham Lincoln after he died,

actually. The poem that I'm going to read today from that collection is,

it's got a long title, and this is what that title is.

A brief refutation of the rumor that I allowed Willie and Tad to relieve themselves

in my upturned hat on a Sunday morning at the office while their mother was attending religious

services.

So that's the whole title.

It goes like this.

I will allow a tall hat can be put to purposes

other than the polite covering of the head.

And the record shows I carried papers in mind.

Important papers, too.

And for dramatic effect, I'd pull them out in court,

...