HOMAGE TO WHITMAN

This day, this arch of birch over the log pile,
this large sky as blue as a sunfish fin,
this pine grove as green as a hunter’s coat.
This bluff, this corn, this mud-wrinkled road
where immigrant Swedes were captured
by the hills, ravines, creeks and oaks--by beauty.

This melting snow, this thawing ice, this heart of mine,
twisting, turning, dangling, wringing, watching and singing
in the clasp of beauty’s large fist. I eat beauty,
I breathe beauty, I rub beauty onto my chest hairs.

The loping dog, the horned ram, the sleek Ford pickup,
the echoing chortle of a strutting tom.
The taupe fields, the cut stalks.
I love the curve of the contoured rows.
The rattling maize leaves slice into my heart,
the plum bush swings its thorns to my throat
Beauty infects me. I accept
the natural hypodermics, all briars and canes,
nettles and thistles, dried and dead and working.
These skin strippers, these clothes tearers,
the ones who wish me naked with them.

I love, too, these stinkpots, this manure bed,
this nest of opossum, rank with winter refuse,
this dormant pile of rot, this embraceable torso,
this limp cock.
This stirring, cracking, shuddering heart opens for them all.

Come in maple sap, lanolin, wet resin, cedar scent,
birch bark, elder root, ash gatherer, tractor hum,
horse fart, skunk tread and pocket gopher mound dust.
Put me in your furry mouth, wrap me in your diaper,
bathe me in your silky hide, scrub me with your stars.

Timothy Young