Sunday, July 1, 2012

A Celebration for Whitman



A Celebration for Whitman
by Gary C. Busha

I celebrate fat bellied pike
and schools of minnows in cool water,
and the wolf on the run, I celebrate,
and the hunter and the hunted.

I celebrate fresh cut lumber and the smell of sawdust,
and the touch against skin
and the scrape of beechbark, I celebrate.

An unknown voice
and the thump in the dark, I celebrate,
and I celebrate butter-fried fish
and the scent of mustard,
and wet wood in autumn.

I celebrate people with beating hearts,
who keep time in rockers on wood porches.

I celebrate water falling endlessly
on rock and the taste
of field onions left drying on lines,
and the words I celebrate,
and the grass and sea and sky.

Myself I celebrate and you, Walt Whitman,
for changing and being the same.


~ first published in Mickle Street Journal