31 “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars”

Where shadows run from themselves

in the lee of a maple

dropping its parasails

she sits and scans his leaves of grass.

Alone with their cryptic blades

she’s undone by the poet’s third eye*.

                        *

His “Song of Myself” at odds with herself

Although he sings:

“There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

Where is the ‘she,’ the ‘her,’ the true knowing

as he sings:

“The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,

The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;

And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,

And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.”

                                    *

One seed pod falls and sits on the page.

It sinks into the spine fold. She reads his

claim as the poet of women and of men,

that being a woman is as great as being a man,

he who says he contains multitudes, does he speak

for her?

Does he act as her tongue? Yes, he avers.

His self is herself, is all selves.

Past one hundred fifty years, he wrote

his many universes lived all at once

in men and women, in bars and bedrooms,

in hospitals, in battlefields, in forests

and fields, and in, under, and over

leaves of grass.

*The third eye is a concept that represents a mystical eye that provides insight and intuition beyond ordinary sight. It is often depicted as being located in the middle of the forehead, slightly above the eyebrows.