Alongside Whitman Poem by David P Williams

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