I Still Remember Walt Whitman

Was is you Jack Kerouac?
walking next to me
down the street
on a brisk September evening
beating around 
America and Mexico?

Was it you Walt Whitman, I saw traveling through the woods?
	Listing to the quiet sounds of America
while still conquering city streets?
	While still roaming the halls of the forest?

But why did you Mr. Poe
	trade a pen for a vice indefinitely,
cease  your soul of poetry
	and your mind of interpreting?

Or was It you –  
Emily Dickinson?
I heard, –  waiting – 
silently without a Word,
without a way out?

And yet Robert Frost,
how can I not feel 
the embrace of a New England Fall
while watching a wall
mend itself in Michigan?

And how is it that something changed in America?
Left the body like a fleeing spirit,
blinded by a neon sign
	displaying a continuos sale
of the American dream,
not listening to the voice that used to be
the role of identity. 

Yet it used to be that America knew
	the soul that lies within.
Spoke the voice of value
even with the hint of sin.

It used to be the writers and poets alike
who commanded the land and shaped the sky.
It used to be that America knew
	itself,
but know it knows nothing
not even that it is lost.

Copyright © Paul Ruth | Year Posted 2008

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