Summer awakening

May
           month of swarming
singing
           mating birds
the bumble-bee month
           the month of the flowering lilac

As I jot this down
           I am out just after sunrise
heading towards the creek
           The lights
the perfumes the melodies
           blue birds and grass birds
and robins in all directions
           the noisy vocal natural concert

For undertones,
           a neighboring woodpecker
tapping his tree
           and the distant clarion of chanticleer

Then the fresh-earth smells
           the colors
the delicate drabs and thin blues
           of the perspective
The bright green of the grass
           has received an added tinge
from the last two days’
           mildness and moisture
How the sun silently mounts
           in the broad clear sky
on its day’s journey!
           How the warm beams bathe all
and come streaming
           kissingly on my face

Now the golden dandelions
           in endless profusion
spotting the ground everywhere
           The white cherry and pear-blows
the wild violets
           with their blue eyes looking up
and saluting my feet
           as I saunter the wood-edge
the rosy blush of budding apple-trees
           the light-clear emerald hue
of the wheat-fields
           the darker green of the rye
a warm elasticity pervading the air
           the cedar-bushes profusely decked
with their little brown apples
           the summer fully awakening
garrulous flocks of blackbirds
           gathering on some tree

Walt Whitman

Adapted by John Lyons from Specimen Days (1882)

Away from tailordom and fashion’s clothes

Away then to loosen
           to unstring the divine bow
so tense so long
           Away from curtain
carpet        sofa        book
           from society
from city house
           street
and modern improvements and luxuries
           away to the primitive winding
wooded creek with its
           untrimmed bushes and turfy banks
away from ligatures
           tight boots
buttons
           and the whole cast-iron
civilized life
           from entourage of artificial store
machine      studio      office       parlor
           from tailordom and fashion’s clothes
from any clothes perhaps
           the summer heats advancing
there in those watery
           shaded solitudes

Away soul
           let me talk in perfect freedom
negligently        confidentially
           for one day and night at least
returning to the naked source
           —life of us all—
to the breast of the great silent
           savage all-accepting Mother

Alas!
           how many of us are so sodden
have wandered so far away
           that return is almost impossible

Walt Whitman, from Specimen Days (1882)

Edited by John Lyons

The real reality

The fervent heat
            of this pure day down by
the glassy waters of the creek
            white and pink pond-blossoms
with great heart-shaped leaves
            the banks with dense bushery
and the picturesque beeches
            and shade and turf
the tremulous reedy call
            of some bird from recesses
breaking the warm indolent
            half-voluptuous silence

just over the surface of the pond
            two large slate-colored dragon-flies
with their wings of lace
            circling and darting
occasionally stopping quite still
            their wings quivering all the while
a flitting blackbird
            crosses obliquely

warmth light shade
            sounds that enhance the solitude
the quawk of some pond duck
            crickets and grasshoppers
mute in the noon heat
            but I hear the first of the cicadas

the prevailing delicate yet palpable,
            spicy grassy clovery
perfume to my nostrils
            and encircling over all
to my sight and soul
            the free space of the sky
transparent and blue
            and there in the west
a mass of white-gray fleecy clouds
            the sailors call “shoals of mackerel”
the sky with silver swirls
            like locks of tossed hair
spreading expanding— a vast
            voiceless formless simulacrum
yet may-be – who knows ? –
            the most real reality of all

Walt Whitman

(adapted from Specimen Days by John Lyons)

DAYS AT J. B.’S TURF-FIRES

At sunrise
           the pure clear sound
of the meadow lark
           and later
some notes
           few and simple
yet delicious and perfect
           from the bush-sparrow—
towards noon the reedy trill
           of the robin

Today is the fairest
           sweetest yet
penetrating warmth
           a lovely veil in the air
partly heat-vapour
           and partly from the turf-fires
everywhere in patches
           on the farms

A group of soft maples near by
           silently bursts out in crimson tips
buzzing all day with busy bees
           The white sails
of sloops and schooners
           glide up and down the river
and long trains of cars
           with ponderous roll
or faint bell notes
           almost constantly
on the opposite shore
           The earliest wild flowers
in the woods and fields,
           spicy arbutus
blue liverwort
           frail anemone
and the pretty white blossoms
           of the bloodroot

As I go along the roads
           I like to see the farmers’ fires
in patches
           burning the dry brush
turf and debris
           How the smoke crawls along
flat to the ground slanting
           slowly rising
reaching away
           and at last dissipating

Walt Whitman

(adapted by John Lyons)

Wild flowers

Oceans of them
           line the roads
through the woods
           border the edges
of the water-runlets
           grow all along the old fences
and are scattered in profusion
           over the fields

An eight-petalled blossom
           of gold-yellow clear and bright
with a brown tuft in the middle
           nearly as large as a silver half-dollar
is very common : yesterday
           on a long drive I noticed it
thickly lining the borders
           of the brooks everywhere

Then there is a beautiful weed
           covered with blue flowers
however white is the prevailing colour
           but there are all hues and beauties
especially on the frequent tracts
           of half-opened scrub-oak
and dwarf cedar hereabout
           —wild asters of all colours
Despite the frost-touch
           the hardy little chaps
maintain themselves
           in all their bloom

Walt Whitman

(Adapted by John Lyons from Specimen Days, first published in 1882.)

Palpable spring indeed

Palpable spring indeed
           or the indications of it
I’m sitting in bright sunshine
           at the edge of the creek
the surface just rippled by the wind
           all is solitude
morning freshness
           negligence

For companions my two kingfishers
           sailing winding darting dipping
sometimes capriciously separate
           then flying together
I hear their guttural twittering
           again and again

As noon approaches
           other birds warm up
the reedy notes of the robin
           and now and then through the trees
the sibilant murmur
           of a stiff breeze

Then a poor dead leaf
           long frost-bound
whirls from somewhere up aloft
           in one wild escaped freedom-spree
in space and sunlight
           and then dashes down
to the waters
           which soon drown it out of sight

The bushes and trees
           are yet bare
but the beeches have
           their wrinkled yellow leaves
of last season’s foliage largely left
           frequent cedars and pines still green
and the grass not without proofs
           of coming fullness

And over all a wonderfully fine dome
           of clear blue
the play of light
           coming and going
and great fleeces of white clouds
           swimming by so silently

Walt Whitman

Adapted by John Lyons from Specimen Days (1882)

The eloquence of trees

Here now before me
is a fine yellow poplar
quite straight
perhaps ninety feet high
and four thick at the butt

How strong and vital
how enduring
how dumbly eloquent !

What suggestions
of imperturbability and being
as against the human trait
of mere seeming

Then the heroic  
almost emotional
palpably artistic 
qualities of a tree
so innocent and harmless
yet so savage

It is
yet says nothing
How it rebukes all weathers
by its tough and equable serenity
this gusty-tempered little whiffet
man
that runs indoors at a mite
of rain or snow

Perhaps the greatest moral lesson
from earth and rocks and animals
is that same lesson of inherency
of what is
without the least regard
to what the looker-on supposes or says
or whether he likes or dislikes

What worse
what more general malady
pervades each and all of us
our literature our education
our attitude toward each other
even toward ourselves
than a morbid trouble
about seems
and no trouble at all
or hardly any
about the sane
slow-growing perennial
real parts of character
books and friendship and marriage
humanity’s invisible foundations

The all-basis
the nerve
the great-sympathetic
the plenum within humanity
giving stamp to everything
that is necessarily invisible

Walt Whitman

Adapted from Specimen Days (1882)