Thunderstorm from east, hulking dog Crawling along the Chattahoochee, You growl and gnash your teeth at me

And then as rain bends and beats the carpet Of leaves, and trees rustle their glassy skirts Amorously, I drink avidly from this cup And that cup, and then that one too With mouth bent over all the creeks Rippled with surf and heaven-seed.

I give to you my human weariness And you give me a shirt of wet fur. Freedom though is not in wearing this But in being your wild energy. I learn Not to ask for more, and even more, How to rejoice is what I am taught By woods shaking with your laughter.

You lie there ahead of me and invite Me to these fields where saints arrive Cracking open fragrant coffins of petals. I keep loafing & inviting your soul, Walt.

Notes: Walt Whitman, not that printer-bum of Manhattano, but that mythical Norse-like hero, that vagabond demi-god as J.L. Borges called him, turns another page today, hundred and fifty years after he came forth as a slow burning blue foxfire bright as northern lights, as aurora borealis, as the sexy wild omnivore who sucked the world into him, through the unprecedented revelation (Borges’s appropriate characterization, Prolouges, pp 445, Selected Non-Fictions) known to us as Leaves of Grass And even though his poetry perhaps demands careful scrutiny and close reading, the kind offered by a species called homo lit-critters, I can only offer the above muted howl in response to his barbaric yawp. Long Live Walt!