After a delay, Whitman.

Better late than never. There's some triteness to brighten your day.

But in all seriousness, I do have a splendid poem to share with you all. Well, its actually only a section of a poem. The writer's name is Walt Whitman, and the poem I'm drawing from is titled The Song of Myself. You've all heard of it if you took an American literature class, which may also mean that most of you don't want a rehash of that same boogering. But bear with me. Whitman isn't a booger. And contrary to what you may think of poets in general, Whitman wasn't a insulated loungeabout either. He was a nurse in the Civil War, and spent the greater portion of his income supplementing his supplies. Death surrounded him, yet Whitman notes that without the Civil War "and the experiences they gave, "Leaves of Grass" would not now be existing." The Good Gray Poet can lay claim to a poet lineage unlike any other, and he may have perhaps, along with Emily Dickinson, granted America its most lasting legacy. Enjoy this glimpse of Whitman's creation, and bear his advice in mind: "No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance, or as aiming mainly towards art and aestheticism."

~~~

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.