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| Walt Whitman, in 1857. PC: Library of Congress |
As I Ponder’d in Silence
There’s
that one corner in the kitchen, you know it,
where the cats like to linger
in
blue shadows of evening and in oblong squares of afternoon
sunlight. Walt Whitman stands there
examining
imperfections in the wall and dust on a sconce.
He thinks I don’t see him,
but even a diaphanous Walt Whitman is heavy
in this world, his presence betrayed
by
the lazy drift of dust motes through his haunting
appearance. I never thought
I
would be haunted like this, by loneliness, yes,
by self-doubt, yes,
by
a crushing lack of belief, yes, and yes, and yes.
But here I am, leaning
against
the counter, drinking my too sweet coffee,
looking at the gray ghost of a man
who
whispers into the unused spaces of this room
where house spiders abandon
cobwebs
in hard to reach angles, where pockets of darkness
make themselves at home.
He is quiet in his meditation, his
quandary
of
what he has become, of what the world has become,
a cacophony quelled right here
in the stillness of this
room.
From Pent-Up Aching Rivers
All
life comes from water, ask any rainstorm.
One
summer, I ran naked into a downpour
to
feel the freshness of creation. This morning,
however,
I am in the shower when Walt Whitman joins me.
Water
cascades across the fullness of his chest,
drips
from his wiry beard, glorifies his manhood and glistens
his
legs. He knows the controversy of his
sexuality,
but
he is unconcerned, as am I
while
I thrust my hands through his hair and down his back
before
we taste each other’s lyrics, our bodies singing
while
the sun rushes through the window
thinking
itself a god, watching us
enjoy
the passion of running water.
I
tell this hoary specter about the Ohio River
sludging
past this town, unclean currents
cutting
through the earth, making love
to
loose leaves and sunken branches
as
we stand here and the mirror clouds with steam.
Am
I an incubus pulling this man from the past
into
my wanton clutches? Am I an unsatisfied
lover
giving
flesh to my desires? I have this
tremulous aching.
We
will rise from the muddy banks
like
souls, or angels, or birds of prey.
I Am He That Aches with Love
My
father had a mistress,
a woman I can only
imagine
since
I only ever saw her shoulder
in the passenger seat of
a Dodge Dart,
a
boxy car now in a junk heap somewhere.
Whitman sits beside me,
an
ashen ghost,
and he explains to me in
verse
the
laws of attraction,
that the moon cannot
sway
without
the earth, that the earth
cannot turn without the
sun
that
the sun cannot shine
without a burning heart.
Which
is what I have,
a conflagration that
pulls
everything
closer, that causes
an updraft toward glory,
the
clouds, the ether, the heavens,
the great star clusters
at
the outer edges of the universe
where Walt and I will
one day meet
with
all the atoms of all the bodies
of every lover come and
gone.
My
father quit his lover
to keep his family.
Every
attraction has its consequences.
A neutron star will pull
and pull,
a
force so strong
there is no such thing
as resistance.
I forgive him.
Gravity
is such a funny thing.
Here the Frailest Leaves of Me
I
pretend not to notice as Walt Whitman lies next to me.
The
bed shifts with his weight, and he’s giving me a homoerotic look,
his
eyes gone gray with twilight.
He
smells of the musk of the man he was, this shameless apparition.
He
interrupts my reading, pulls the book from my hands,
and
tells me I am too insecure about my body,
that
a little extra weight around my waist is a sign of good living,
a
sign of a steadfast lover. He pulls me
close and tells me that
the
four chambers of my heart are the homes for every love
I’ve
every known. And there I am, sobbing
in
the arms of this barbaric man,
and
I begin to suckle his nipple, the baby to his motherly instinct,
and
the milk begins to flow, milk to soothe
the
feeling that I disappoint my father, milk to heal
the
wound of not becoming the man my mother expected.
I
lean further into this sage until we are kissing,
our
tongues slick with each other’s most intimate thoughts.
Then
I look at him in the low light of the bedside lamp,
And
I know all the things he never had in his life.
If
ever the world had a lover, it is he.
Every
plant, every bird, every ship gone out to sea.
That Shadow My Likeness
Morning,
I think of the sun, how it has no shadow,
no companion to follow its every
move.
As
I walk to the garden, I notice Walt Whitman
has made himself my shadow, my shade
upon the world.
He
leans in close to the eggplant to examine
the holes in the leaves, the larval
bugs that live
on
this nightshade. He loves them all.
Then he checks the tomato vines,
the
acrid smell of their leaves rubbing off and clinging
to his arms, his legs, his buttocks
and groin.
I
think he likes this little game, attaching himself to my body,
each piece of me standing for each
piece of him.
I
think he likes being out in the world again
listening to thrush and finch, to
motors and mayhem,
to
the hum of electric lines, to the rhythm
of footsteps on the sidewalk,
to
the baseball game in the park, to lovers
making sounds only lovers can make.
There
is no shaking him loose. But, at night,
he rises up to the universe, my body
his anchor
to
all the loves he dare not leave behind.
He tells me the sun is a lonely god,
creating
what
it cannot have, which is something
that we cannot give.
Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field
One Night
I
had no idea that self-discovery would involve Walt Whitman,
but
tonight there is no doubt the great gray bard sits with me
watching
fireflies spark in the water maple
that
has sunk its roots through pipes, into undrained soil
hundreds
of yards in every direction, under us
as
we look up to see the shadow of our world drift
out
past the moon to god-knows-where.
He
begins to weep, not for himself, but for me.
He tells me
I
will miss all of this, the good solid ground beneath my feet,
the
silky wind across my bare chest, the song of blood in my veins.
Sing,
he says. Sing for apples still green on
the tree.
Sing
for bean blossoms filling the vine.
Sing
for birdsong rising just before dawn.
A
patchy fog sinks into the neighborhood, and we begin
to
drift in conversation. He tells me of
his many loves.
I
tell him such things I will not reveal to you.
Yes,
I know you are there.
Morning
comes quickly. Ghosts rise with mist.
Let
us go to the place where we first met
to
talk through the strange hardship of day,
to
sing vigil for the fragile touch of night.
