celebration, a poem

for Walt Whitman

and I will celebrate with you,
am honoured to partake of this
your glorious noble design:

I will sing and I will dance and
share your cells, your ions, atoms,
fill my lungs with our biology.

and like you, madman, would I could
unveil the crystals of the snow,
or surge, an atom on the wind:

open wide the stained-glass gates of
morning dew drop on the grass, to
find within a silhouette of life.

and I shall be a pedagogue
of all humanity—a tear
of crystal on the face of joy:

I will sing and I will shout and
rend the morning air with razor
words, ephemeral, a vigil in the night.

and so this gift of language is
to celebrate, indicative
of inarticulate, our humanness:

we are but a passing of the
myst’ry breathed upon the soil of
earth—a blade of grass, a wisp of cloud.

and fire at dawn awakes the dome
of azure life, shall greet us as
we revel in our passing breath:

with bells and cymbals, tambourine,
the clamoring gift of language,
psalms to wake the dawn and fill our lives.

and ‘till the passing passes me,
and offers up His ions to
the next, I celebrate with you:

ripples of concentric joy, the
pebbles of our soul shattering
serene the glinting lake of life.