Me and Whitman

Me and Whitman

Today is the anniversary of the first publication of Leaves of Grass back in 1855.

This book was my bible, my pal, my diary when I was in my late teens and early 20s.

I carried a copy with me wherever I went.  I would sneak it open in the classroom when the biology professor wasn't looking, and I would read it on the L trains as they criss-crossed the skies of Chicago.

And he never left me!

Here's a poem about me and Walt and that time and this time.

It appeared recently in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

AN OLD MAN LISTENING TO A YOUNG MAN

LISTENING TO WHITMAN

He spoke to me in the desert
Outside of Elko, Nevada,
Back forty-some years ago.

Maybe I was asleep
Or maybe I was dreaming.
I don’t remember now.

I was lying on the hard sand,
The billion names of God shining
Above me in the darkest sky.

I was alone there. Not even
A book of poems with me,
When Whitman whispered,

“Arise and sing naked
And dance naked
And visit your mother naked

“And be funny and tragic
and plugged in, and embrace
the silent and scream for them

“And look for me beneath
the concrete streets beneath
your shoeless feet in Chicago

“And ask somebody to dance
The bossa nova and hear him or her say
Sorry I left my carrots at home

“And be a mind-blistered astronaut
With nothing to say to the sun
But—Honey I’m yours.”

That’s the kind of stuff
Whitman was always whispering,
On and on, stuff like that.

And I got up and searched
In my backpack for a candy bar,
Chewed it ‘til there was nothing left

And then I hitched up the road
Out of that silence
Back to the city I grew up in,

Its blocks of blocks of bricks
And its old people in their factories
Who went to Church and got drunk

Who hurt the ones they loved,
Who wondered who made them,
Who lived and died in due time

Who taught me the world is sand
And drifting dreams and clouds
That speak no English.