Re-read Walt Whitman (1819-1892). (If you aren’t familiar with his work, you are in for a treat.)

He is celebratory, and pansexual. An Everyman, and solitary poet/thinker. An American patriot and passionate internationalist. Critical thinker and Dionysian hedonist. Naturalist and urbanite. A pacifist, and an unabashed feminist. Devoted to personal freedoms and to empathy. And one hell of a poet.

(The following quotes are from Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose, Toby Press, 2003)

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth,

I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Will we rate our cash and business high? I have no objection,
I rate them as high as the highest—then a child born of a woman and man I rate beyond all rate.

We thought our Union grand, and our Constitution grand,
I do not say they are not grand and good, for they are,
I am this day just as much in love with them as you,
Then I am in love with You, and with all my fellows upon the earth.
We consider bibles and religions divine—I do not say they are not divine,
I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still,
It is not they who give life, it is you who give the life,
Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth than they are shed out of you.

Resist much, obey little.

Walt Whitman is my hero.