On Blennerhassett Island with Walt Whitman

He sat on this patch of turf, and if not this exact place a piece of a place nearby. Naturally, I try to feel his companionship. Did he write a line of poetry on this small island or was he simply being Walt Whitman, honored guest, a person he hardly recognized from his youth. I feel his old bones not his youthful step also, his spacious poetry, that storied ever travelling imagery passing-by upon these Ohio river currents. His sweeping insights navigating slow wide bends, and the churning history of these waters. I imagine his hand on the ground, it heaves my body up from the deep grass and quilts me to a shared terrain a place where beating heron wings count the pulse of two lives. I feel the mutuality of crossed roads, the cadence of restless breezes as they ruffle a coat he left draped over a rail of this same wooden jetty.