Camden
One stone bears Whitman’s name
over the entrance to the crypt
A hillside to itself, just as he
intended, shady, cool, hidden from
the brilliant sun. An American
flag piercing the ground
beside it a rock shows his image,
half in profile. Not a mile or two
from his home, down on the harbor
where sail boats glide over the river
along the Camden side, across
the way sits Philadelphia, thriving
city with a nation’s story. There
the constitution was written,
there the bells pealed out in victory.
How he must have strolled its streets
remembering his time in Brooklyn,
walking in another great city,
strolling its avenues, past shops,
past the warehouses full of wares,
seeing at evening the ferry’s wake,
softly lap the banks of Manhattan
to ponder things great and small,
the lives of the crowd.
Here in the dream of lands
out West, fields of wheat and
humble townships, or of the vast
ports in the East, Boston dockside,
Norfolk, Baltimore, teeming with life
and ardor —virile
youths with powerful bodies,
comradeship and manly adhesion —
bromances and metrosexuals,
down to our hands with these
two rings, symbols of trust and
same-sex marriage. What would
he think of two so bonded, drawn
by passion long ago, here in this time
of new-found freedoms—death
until death should dully part—
what would the Good Gray Poet say
as we stand so near his grave?
—Walter Holland
__________
Walter Holland, Ph.D., is the author of three books of poetry Circuit(2010), Transatlantic (2001), A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992 (1992) as well as a novel, The March (2011). His short stories have been published in Art and Understanding, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, and Rebel Yell, Some of his poetry credits include: Antioch Review, Art and Understanding, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, The Cream City Review, Found Object, Pegasus, Phoebe, and Poets for Life:76 Poets Respond to AIDS. He lives in New York City.