gary busha | a celebration for whitman

Poetry Dispatch No.134 | December 5, 2006

A Celebration for Whitman by Gary Busha

I celebrate fat-bellied pike
and schools of minnows in cool water,
and the wolf on the run, I celebrate,
and the hunter and the hunted.
I celebrate fresh cut lumber and the smell of sawdust
and the touch against skin
and the scrape of beech bark, I celebrate.
An unknown voice
and the thump in the dark, I celebrate,
and I celebrate butter-fried fish
and scent of mustard,
and wet wood in autumn.
I celebrate people with beating hearts,
who keep time in rockers on wood porches.
I celebrate water falling endlessly
on rock and the taste
of field onions left drying on lines,
and the words I celebrate,
and the grass and sea and sky.
Myself I celebrate and you, Walt Whitman,
for changing and being the same.

from LINES ON LAKE WINNEBAGO, Marsh River Editions, 2002, $8