Alongside Whitman we worked
in the tents and borrowed rooms
of pain and blood
...
I wish this were a sacrifice time
a flaten tin cans and bind up paper time
a Cub scout drive time
A Spitfire and Helldiver time
...
I have cupped the butts of sea mounts
in my hands
and brought the fecund ocean to my lips
...
They are afraid of us, of course,
the women
Yet they allow us entry
to their very interior.
...
1950's Marine and Policeman 1960's Social worker, community organizer, San Francisco Bay Area 1970's University Professor, Univ of West Va, Boston Univ, Univ of Maine, Dalhousie University Halifax NS, Canada. 1980's 90's International Community Development, Tanzania, Guyana So. amer, Slovakia 1990's Psychotherapist, Guardian ad Litem)
Alongside Whitman
Alongside Whitman we worked
in the tents and borrowed rooms
of pain and blood
Whitman comforted the dying
while I toted bedpans of nightsoil
and bundles of pus infused rags.
Not that he did not do his share
of the cleanup of filth
but why waste him as a porter
When he gave the dying an ease
and calm that simulated
their mother's busom.
In those awaiting the knife
the loss of arms and legs
he kindled the wish to live
He invoked home and homilies
the grass sea enveloping
the rutted track to their cabin
a life that led somewhere
over the hill thru the
shivering copse of trees
to the thirst quenching
stream watering a field
of his own crops
And the cowards,
those of “a tender heart”,
who fought the war
all night in their dreams
who jumped at every gunshot
and sweated in the corner
Whitman called them soldier