September 2022
Author's Note: The following poem was taken from a little chapbook collection of ekphrastic poems, Surfaces, by March Street Press. It's a poem of experience, and on rereading seemed to me to be somewhat in keeping with 'a time to reap'.
Walt Whitman's Novel
It is a Vivaldian summer passing
in verdant flashes, chlorophyll cells trembling
from rapid growth, then a child
comes to the door, she will uproot
weeds for a fee. At fourteen, flat-chested
& podgy, her parents, working people,
promised her a horse for her twelfth birthday,
a companion. They have yet to make good,
& so she tells me of her new found calling,
she will draw the heads of horses,
travel from stable to stable.
She will do this for a fee.
How do we ever find our way? Must we each
have a labyrinth? A design in green?
Walt’s first book was a moral illustration
on intemperance, & by the author’s account,
written in three days inspired by gin.
He did this for a fee.
From my window I see the child
who wants to travel town to town
in the garden pulling weeds.
I tell her she can stop,
& pay her off, enough for a box of charcoals,
some paper, acid-free, well-made.
Originally published in SurfacesMarch Street Press
©2022 Michael Gessner
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