52 Weeks: Whitman
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
52 Weeks: Mullein**
The Red-Tailed hawk swoops by and catches just a glimpse, he tilts his head Dionysian style mouth slightly agape.
I too am a wild thing, I too am untethered,
And I sound animalistic in the dining halls of the tamed.
The final missile thud holds me in a sweet caress,
My likeness rockets earthward … tried and true and tired and truer,
I am coaxed into existence once again.
I maintain my aetheric ties as I know this is the roadmap back to you,
It’s nice to be enmeshed in the living once again even though they drain,
To drain is to live, one gives eternity to be mortal - it’s the only thing that ever made sense.
I won’t depart, I dig in my heels,
And I turn my back on the organized.
I am of the earth because I understand my antecedents … my mother’s mother’s mother …
And because of this knowledge of ante’s I can set prece’s, hopefully precisely.
I hardly know who I am or what I mean (on a good day),
But I am good for you none the less,
As our tastes and sounds and smells and touches intermingle.
And always I wait patiently,
for me for you,
for us.
An adaptation of Whitman's final stanza in Song of Myself