TUESDAY POEM | Who Learns My Lessons Complete? by Walt Whitman

CB | Light Calligraphy

                    Who learns my lesson complete?
                     Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,
                     The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant,
                     clerk, porter and customer,
                     Editor, author, artist, and schoolboy--draw nigh and commence;
                     It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
                     And that to another, and every one to another still.
                     The great laws take and effuse without argument,
                     I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
                     I love them quits and quits, I do not halt and make salaams.
                     I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons
                     of things,
                     They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
                     I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--
                     it is very wonderful.
                     It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe moving so
                     exactly in its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt or
                     the untruth of a single second,
                     I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years,
                     nor ten billions of years,
                     Nor plann'd and built one thing after another as an architect plans
                     and builds a house.
                     I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
                     Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
                     Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.
                     Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;
                     I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and
                     how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,
                     And pass'd from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of
                     summers and winters to articulate and walk--all this is
                     equally wonderful.
                     And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
                     without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see
                     each other, is every bit as wonderful.
                     And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
                     And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to
                     be true, is just as wonderful.
                     And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is
                     equally wonderful,
                     And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
                     wonderful.

                     Walt Whitman

To read this week's Tuesday Poems, click on the quill then make your way down the list of poets on the Left-hand side of the TP page. Zireaux is this week's editor. Bonzai by Cecily Barnes begins -  

                     Who needs your stunted style, your tiny jewels

                     of thwarted art, to snatch a kite flown loose

                     or bad-thrown ball? Or your unsayable rules

                     of infinite pleasures unknown, delights abstruse,

                     to feel soft feathers, their talons' sponsal band? . . .

Zireaux's commentary is anything but stunted! He takes the reader on what I think you'll agree is a fair romp of personal disclosure.

Tuesday Poem | The World Below the Brine by Walt Whitman

                     The world below the brine, 
                     Forests at the bottom of the sea, the branches and leaves, 
                     Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds, the thick 
                     tangle openings, and pink turf, 
                     Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold, the 
                     play of light through the water, 
                     Dumb swimmers there among the rocks, coral, gluten, grass, rushes, 
                     and the aliment of the swimmers, 
                     Sluggish existences grazing there suspended, or slowly crawling 
                     close to the bottom, The sperm-whale at the surface blowing air and spray, or disporting 
                     with his flukes, 
                     The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy 
                     sea-leopard, and the sting-ray, 
                     Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes, sight in those ocean-depths, 
                     breathing that thick-breathing air, as so many do, 
                     The change thence to the sight here, and to the subtle air breathed 
                     by beings like us who walk this sphere, 
                     The change onward from ours to that of beings who walk other spheres. 

                     Walt Whitman (1819 - 1902) 

This week's editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Lesotho-born, Paris-based poet Rethabile Masilo

with A Poem for the Innocents

by Geoffrey Philp 

                                                             "A killing moon peeks through leaves

                                                             of trumpet trees in full bloom

                                                             for Lent, their barks crisscrossed

                                                             by wild strokes of a machete

                                                             when my son tried to help me weed

                                                             our garden, overrun with dandelions. . . " 

To read on, please click on the quill. 

This is what you shall do

". . . this is what you shall do: love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. . . "

Walt Whitman

Alice Walker posted this piece on her blog a week or so ago - The Cushion and the Road: Meditation and Wandering As the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way. I go there often and always find succour. She reminds me of things I know and hold dear but sometimes lose sight of. She reminds me to look inside and outside, both. Her Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir (a tender and unhurried unfolding; each new chapter appears on the blog as it comes to her) is especially penetrating and affecting.

And - oh, oh oh - you have to read this poem. . . Loving Humans