The Compassion of Walt Whitman

Walt never got to watch the Nature
Channel or Discovery or even History.
So how the devil did he know
what the world was like down below
the foam, including forests
at the bottom of the sea as if
he had bright lighting for his close-
ups of each species? He wrote
like a journalist familiar with green
gardens on the sea floor, with dancing
leafy lettuce and lichens on the coral.

You might think that Walt had strolled
for hours amidst sluggish beings
grazing far down there, but then
he surfaced like a whale and told
about his friends disporting
at every depth. Like a marine
biologist he lectured on sharks
and turtles and leopards of the sea,
not to mention wide-finned
sting rays that flapped their fins.

Or were they wings he claimed
to see fluttering not far offshore?
However you explain his visions,
could it be that Walt was trying
to escape the war he wandered through
and preferred the bottom of the sea
to tents with bloody earthen floors?
Did he tire of reading to the wounded
and wrapping bandages that became
their shrouds, as well as bestowing
kisses as they died? Walt cared
so much that, even when he knew
not what he wrote of, he loaded up
his effusive lines with near universal love.

copyright 2006 David Ray
bio
Contents 06