Ronald Johnson

L

Letters to Walt Whitman

I

I hear you are whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns — O grass of graves...
If you do not say anything how can I say anything?

Let us tunnel

the air
(as a mole’ s green galleries)
toward the ultimate

cornfield
— the square of gold, & green, & of tassle

that rustles back at us —

let us burrow in
to a susurration, the dense starlings,

of the real —
the huge
sunflowers waving back at us,

as we move

— the great grassy world

that surrounds us,
singing.