Three For Walt Whitman On Past And Present Occasions Of His Birthday, May 31,1819 Poem by Warren Falcon

1
Upon This Wide Water, On Staten Island Ferry - Manhatta 1985

'On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are
more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.'
- Walt Whitman, from 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'

Upon this wide water, Whitman's bay, wandering
outward toward Eastward windings -

Upon this white-starred charted bay we ride
gray with midnight leaning toward the Towers**
distant growing, stalking, yellow and glowing,
mimicking the stars -

Our eyes stare tearing,
sea wind pushes lids to slits.
We glimmer. Lights shimmer
ahead and above,
and still we cry -

the wind.


The ferry, furtive, floats the edge of Manhatta.
There's power pushing against the bow,
riptides to the rear, but we go on,
approach sleepily, enamored of gin and
the beds we will make again and again
pulling sheets tighter. This stretching water
safe-keeps the light of eyes and the city there.

Upon the water's wide skirt one will, quiet,
lift up a hand to the spray, sway for love,
and pray for the world.


A dark tern unfurls from the sail
of a starboard yacht, flirts once with
the silhouette extended upon the wave,
then leaves, an under-turning rail or rudder
sinking in the ferrier's wake.


Each night there must be one, out there,
on the deck, supplicating in boozy tongue
oozing heart-love all over spurning the way
things go down in the world, cheap spindrift
the cranes know of, dipping their bloated
beaks to the waves. And he must dip his head,
braying, with his hands motioning to the night -

Away! Away!

**
World Trade Towers

2
On Our Broken Boat The Harsh Light Will Not Break

'Others the same - others who look back on me because I look'd forward to them, What is it then between us? ...What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? ' - Walt Whitman

On our broken boat the harsh light will not break.
We see our day clearly as we can.
Tell the night, now it's here to stay, that

once I glanced the sleeping youth, legs against the wall,
felt a pall descend upon us here,
this boat lancing the bay waters darkly.

Some to books then, the priest to his sad, effeminate stare.
I can no longer envy those of the black cloth
so bend and tie the shoe.

We shod our feet against what long loss of motion,
eyes downcast or boldly returning the stare?

Beneath each eye there's some familiar look we refuse.
We map our way to sleep in the palms of shy or frightened hands.

3

I, Minimus, Tongue In Cheek, Creak Oar Into Homeric Sea

I, Minimus, tongue in cheek, creak oar, row out, too,
into the Homeric sea, not old Greek singer, long of breath,
but as Whitman, local seer, his pains & pens, straw hat
consigned to mistook heroics, pure accident, not, back
then, a maritime radio to check, no present captain to ask
if a row boat's worthy of even an American sea, projected
too, can go a-row row rowing, claw oar into wave tips'
whitecaps safe perimeters, smell of earth nasal-yet to keep oriented to dirt.

Have, instead, reaped I redundant whirlwind
play America the Fool again, naively trusting my
and country's destiny are one, always good in spite
of Melville's long eloquent 'discantus supra librum' -
'above the book' - more truing than any, to spoil it,
the projected 'pluribus unum' thing, for Mayflower
folks tripping lightly between the hawthorns,
their imported gardens and God, the irritant
tomahawks 'can only turn out swell, ' thought
they, like waves gathering in sea full of themselves
individually Destined, they then and do think,
to break just for, O America, thee.

And now come poets each century heavier than
before, heavier than the other few, this new one, too,
only bards, a real few, to bar, board up the big gaps,

O great light gaping torn off, oft thee sung,
slung over shoulder, hauled, the burden,

O the load
it is now become.