I hope you had a chance to see the PBS special on Walt Whitman. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I was
inspired to put pen or 'puter to hand:
There are occasions when (like Whitman) I celebrate myself.
Of me I sing: as the ubiquitous gulls sing of of the sea.
I am of the sea; the sea is coursing through my veins
and the ragged lines of the song I sing.
Whitman's "well-made man appears not only in his face,
[but] curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists."
I myself lack a wrist to stand on, a hip to swing,
a shoulder to put to the wheel, or (in Dylan's lament)
a "sulking, skulking, coal black soul" to embrace.
Nevertheless I am my legitimate self. I rise and fall
on the rhythms of the sea. Of me I sing
in the eyes of those who take pleasure in the harmonic me.
