Tag Archives: Walt Whitman

No eternal rest amid self-righteous throngs
sipping ambrosia within alabaster walls, no
Maxfield Parrish reflection pools beyond

the finish line. I dawdle, instead, like a child
lost in discovery, back when we walked
to school, pockets full of lucky things.

Somewhere in the hazy middle of the race,
the urgent brain beat softens with the flesh
to take up bird songs and wildflowers—

those delicate and fleeting magnificences
that will outlast our pious imperatives,
slogans turned to draw mindless stampedes

to hungry bone piles. The immortal yet live
and work among the leaves of grass, and
not contained between my hat and boots.