Here in Alliance, Illinois,
I'm living in the middle,
standing on the Courthouse lawn
in the middle of town,
in the middle of my life,
a self-confessed middlebrow,
a member of the middle class,
and of course Middle Western,
the middle, you see, the middle,
believing in the middle way,
standing here at midday
in the middle of the year,
breathing the farm-fragrant air
of Sunflower County,
in the true-blue middle
of middle America,
in the middle of my dreams.

From Alliance, Illinois by Dave Etter. Copyright © 1983 by Dave Etter. First published 1983 by Spoon River Press. Published in 2004 and used by permission of Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.