Open hearts and open minds are what the people need

I Sit and Look Out

“I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world.

and upon all oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves,

remorseful after deeds done,

I see in low life the mother misused by  her children, dying, neglected,

gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women,

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid,

I see the working of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots

who shall be kill’d to preserve the lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons

upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like,

All these–all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look our upon,

See, hear, and am silent.”

—–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Come, said my Soul,

Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one).

That should I after death invisibly return,

Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,

There to some group of mates the chants resuming,

(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)

Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,

Ever and ever yet the owning—as, first, I here and now,

Singing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

Walt Whitman

The earth is filled with the love from the Divine

Thought

“Of Justice—as if Justice could be any thing but the same ample law,

expounded by natural judges and saviors,

As if it might be this thing or that thing, according to decisions.”

—–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Animals, birds, and humans all love the  Peninsula

 Photograph taken and copyrighted in 2009 by Barbara Mattio

The first edition of Leaves of Grass took various forms during the poet’s lifetime. In 1855, the first edition was a thin book with twelve poems.The final edition was published containing more than three hundred. I have the “Deathbed” edition and I can’t tell you how his words soothe and relax me. As an artist, a poet, Mr. Whitman wrote poems that remain an American classic.Whitman died in March 26, 1892. In my opinion, there were several American poets who have taken American life and raised it to a treasure. Robert Frost, Longfellow, Thoreau all took American poetry and gave it to the people.

Hydrangea. Photo taken and copyrighted in 2012 by Barbara Mattio