An Ode to Walt Whitman by by Hayley Stoddard

When you sang the song of yourself, 
you said that you would filter and fibre my blood.
You said that you would for wait for me

that if I was lost, to keep seeking
for I would find you around some bend in the next road
perhaps sitting at the base of a great green pine.

I still think one day I might see you there,
waiting for me just like you said, planted down in the dirt,
arms thrown around your knees and your head thrown back,

white hair like some ragged crown around your head,
bright blue eyes staring up with a toothy grin, 
just laughing at the clouds and at all the world 

waiting for me there silently, 
your chest rising slightly with each breath
and beckoning me without saying a single word.

I suppose I don’t have any questions to ask, 
for they are simply too small, too great, too endless 
for me to pick out a single one

but I would come and set myself
down in the dirt and the dust with you, 
sitting there in a long pregnant pause,

my arms thrown carelessly around my knees, 
blonde hair brightly gleaming in the sun,
my two blue eyes staring up at the world’s one big one.

There we would stay, planted forever
talking about you and about me, about everything we 
could think of, as the plants slowly grew up around us,

until all that anyone could see
were two large mounds at the base of that pine, 
clothed entirely in bright green leaves of grass. 

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash