Uncle Walt Strikes Again

The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry began, well, great. Filled mostly with American poets from the 19th and 20th Century, it's a testament to our heritage. But lately I haven't been feeling that into this book. I've had a hard time understanding, let alone relating to some of the older poetry. And then I stumbled upon another Walt Whitman poem. Uncle Walt has always held a soft, pillowy spot in my heart, and here's another reason why. This poignant, insightful, timeless piece almost made me cry.

Reconciliation 

1865

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever 

         again, this soiled world;

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

Beginning

Despite my schooling, I'm not convinced that a poem must be doing something. I'm not convinced I even have to understand a poem to be totally ensnared in it. Take, for instance, this glorious piece by James Wright.

Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moons young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

Of course it is doing something! you say. And you're right. But I'm not sure it's doing the same thing for you that it's doing for me. I don't know what Wright was thinking when he wrote this poem, nor what he hoped I might think when I read it today. I mean, the moon is a bird. Is this weird? Is this natural? It lives in the sky, after all. Why is the wheat listening? Where does the woman come from? Is the poem about the woman? The speaker compares himself with the dark wheat, listening to what? To the moon, to the moon's young, to the woman? To the unmentioned rustling of the wind? What is this the beginning of? What I get mostly from this poem, all fantastical elements aside, is the power of nature and observation. I am fully present in this moment, as I am instructed to be, and despite the lack of sounds described in the poem, I am hearing as much as I'm seeing, and I am straining my ears in anticipation for, you guessed it, something to begin. If that doesn't blow your mind, nothing will, my friend, nothing will.