Welcome home, you total stranger (Roy Harper)

A student told me recently that I should put more of my creative stuff on the blog. I thought - yeah, why not. 

So here we go.

I wrote this after coming across the Walt Whitman poem - Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. It's a long poem but if you want to check it out (and you really should read more Uncle Walt to improve your vocabulary and cognitive functions) it can be a click of the mouse away -  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174738

My writing was done with this poem in mind. It's called divinist aromas after a line in Walt's poem: 
You necessary film, continue to envelop my soul, 
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinist aromas

Although I posted about this a few years ago I didn't include my writing so this time...

divinist aromas

1

While towing the horse float

and negotiating the corners

very

very

carefully

I considered the here and now

   and my place,

my belonging,

   to this point,

and the circumstances

that put me here and not there

inside me, not inside you.

I thought, in that moment, about the people

encountered along the way, the path, the route

so far

and wondered about their lives/

   their thoughts.

2

I waited at the lights for the ones to cross

and thought about her and the brown clothes she wore;

children in the back with

their futures and goals intact

but maybe not: sacrificed

   in the pursuit of others;

others with smug contentment;

young ones- still so indestructible.

I sensed them, their lives, their conversations,

their humility, their aromas

and how they connected to me.

3

In that moment I felt the connection with Walt

as he spent time on a ferry

pondering

hundreds of years from here

about similar things-

about all the people who had come before him

and the generations to come after him

generations leapfrogging to now.

4 

Trust him to see me.

Trust him to lead the way.

Trust him to guide me.

Trust him to write it down first.

Trust him to write me.

Trust him to paint the picture.

Trust him to describe me.

Trust him to see the future.

Trust him to see me.

Trust his vision.
Trust him to connect.

Trust him.

Trust him.

5

The centuries to come

and our small part in them

are secure.

The importance assured,

the windfall tree will spill onwards

and the journey will continue.

He has seen it, he has seen it

and it shall come to pass

and it will be more of the same.

6

The same sunsets and commemorations,

the rituals of life,

voting governments for the people,

mowing the lawns of tomorrow,

and it will be great, 
it will be great-

maybe even

as great as Walt.