He sat on this patch of turf,
and if not this exact place
a piece of a place nearby.
Naturally I try to feel his companionship.
Did he write a line of poetry
on this small island
or was he simply being Walt Whitman,
honored guest,
a person he hardly recognized
from his youth?
I feel his old bones not his youthful step
but also his long poems
as they ride Ohio river currents
at ease with the next slow bend,
or some quick kink and churn
of its flowing history.
I imagine his hand on the ground,
it heaves my body up from a deeper grass.
A turf that parcels our presence,
it quilts me to a terrain
where fingers meet on a shared wrist
a place where heron wings beat.
I feel the mutuality of crossed roads,
the cadency of shore eddies
as they unbutton a coat
that he left draped over the rail
of this wooden jetty.
~~
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Rita Bourland
heidibeth
Dr. Spudman44
hilarad
Brazen Princess
M. C. S.
Salon.com
Comments
This was so melodic and a little more sentimental in some ways than your poems I have read, I kept waiting for a zinger, as you have a habit of doing. I liked this tone and flow very much.
at ease with the next slow bend".