Photography Courtesy of Lillian Scott

Ode to Walt Whitman

I.

I am solely, 

a blade of grass

I am a lonely blade

I am to you

most often overlooked

II.

I am colored and bright green

infiltrated and fully saturated

the chlorophyll

the chemistry 

and photosynthesis of your soul

Turning sunlight,

thru fusion

into oxygen.

I am a single blade of grass

I am a host and a multitude

I am legion

a horde in number

a terrible living comfort

III.

I am archetype 

the only blade of grass

bright green and blue green

and un-bleached when dying

I am becoming dirt with all 

to live on in fertile reconstruction

I am fine and tendrils 

close upon translucent

Light deprived chutes

imbibing the essence 

entombed in discarded carbon

I am gnosis

underground, unconscious

convert of concealed thirst

I have risen

composed erect

I am swagger and silentious

if you ask the wind....  

I am master of nothing  

I am quickly cut

and uprooted-  never completely

IV.

To say ....    

                         "Breath"

You breathe in what we share

The atmosphere, your gravity shed

snake skins of memory discarded 

entrails of touch, sweat, dew 

the entropy of our union

taking for granted, all that is solidly

bestowed by dirt and secluded process,

from dulled wits to empty sockets.

I grow even yet

I sustain and support

I am a light tickle

here

waiting for you to take off your shoes

V.

I am

Walt Whitman's dream fading 

from overexposure, receding

from composture reasons

our surfaces pierced by stone

Brittle crusted and dusty boned

covering for every regret.

our love

a remarkably used rug

always free 

and growing unrestrained.

I am a single blade

rotating listlessly,

catching every leaf in sight-

resuscitating before letting them go

deeper into my soil

I am pushing the blade that pierces

I am saying "take and eat, this is my body"

I am hay

of a minuscule variety

too plain to ponder

my own significance. 

VI.

I am

I am a single blade of grass

I am the summer and days of your youth

I am the memory of scents long forgot

If I could

I would 

want to taste once more.