The Good Gray Poet

I too hear my country oh Good Gray Poet, oh scandalous statesman.

Mr. Whitman are these the ideals you could foresee? My tender Bard of Democracy, is the country I now live in coming close to your vision? Would you be proud?

Was your longing for the preservation of all our dignities in vain? Rise from your slumber for just a moment and witness our progress. Do we have a good view from one of those Democratic Vistas? Has our cherished nation created a good enough collective soul?

Does my personal Song of Self properly add to the collective?

You spoke for a young nation and this man, one of those Poets to Come, I from your premonitions call on you once more.

I search for an applicable translation for the modern transcendence that brings about the union of all things. Something that will satisfy contemporary longings for a kind of harmony fitted for our times.

Walt, would you be angry? Should I be? You have always been there on the shelf, revealed through passionate teachers. From bedlams disarray to urban contentment you continuously stood watch: The sentinel of the new commonwealth and Walt, we are aging.

America the brave, America the beautiful, the steadfast country that raised me and my kin, love, loss, and finally complacency. I believe we have been cowed, Mr. Whitman but I can still feel our pulse that could become a loud pounding and finally a recollection of you my dear optimistic man. You loving man. You fellow American man.

How gray does my beard have to get to become as white as yours?

I am the modern man you would sing about. I am the common man entrenched in broken promises of a nation.

When our days finally come to pass and the accounting of what is left will the tally leave you speechless?

I resurrect you for a time so your eyes can see the moral backbone we have created. Was this the future you envisioned for us oh bastion?

Have we obeyed little and resisted enough oh statesman?

Have we earned the right to be compared to the natural beauty of our world you talk so reverently about? Have we promulgated and cleansed our souls enough for your spirits return?

They don’t really tell you the true price of things Walt and we didn’t care too much because we thought the toll had been paid by the ones who came before us.

You must earn your right to live in this world. But do we? Is this a lie? Is this the biggest fib one can inflict on a young one? The world is an experience. The world is alive and we aren’t meant to build barricades against her riches, but we do. And we maintain our ancestors’ illusions and if we’re lucky we will wake up just in time for death.

I will call myself the GroundsKeeper in commemoration of the seeds you scattered in sunlight now buried in shadow.

Mr. Whitman, I invoke thee.

And through all these years I search for the optimism you preached, you are the sage I am acquainted with.

And yes, this song of self we create comes through our connection with those we meet who contain multitudes, us humans who live lives within lives, holding characters within you will never meet.

Our Lore of self lies in the mysteries of our personal inner fantasies and our daydreams make clouds of our reality. And we dance as a specter within its mist. It is doubt in all its little forms. Fear rising in incremental pieces. Now I see the chimera lurking: A terrible sentinel; an eternal guardian. An enigma to your pitiful logic.

And sometimes I’m angry at you.

Oh Poet of the Body, I meditate on what you may call a Common Center.

We witness the generation before us beget nothing but things to overcome.

The tears on my face may one day be equal to all the Leaves of Grass but today they feel very far away from each other.

Middle American Voice of the Future. Do we echo that far back?

Does the nation feel as it did before your war against your brothers and sisters? Maybe you can confirm the kind of off-putting stale air that carries the smell of the old blood of war.

Resurrect yourself, Mr. Whitman. I plead, I plead. I plead.

Help us recite your chants for the Prairies, for the states and the territories and I search for the optimistic fresh fire you tried using to vivify our young nation. I becheech you to consider sparing some of your coal to help our dwindling fire, that still subtly burns, rise again to the fierce inferno you placed your faith and confidence in so long ago.

You left us a world of wonder and we presented its wonder to our children and several paths revealed to the little conquerors as their mouths hang to the ground in awe.

I share some of my thoughts with the future children such as you once did. Maybe then your spirit will collect itself again, even if just for a moment’s inspiration, and if they listen to my pleas from the past your return will become imminent. Maybe this can become a tradition of the resurrected American spirit.

Are we worthy of your return even for just a moment, will the master lend his breath to that vivifying fire of our nation once more?