An ode to Whitman's Song of Myself:

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Waves.

Little pebble underneath the sun

Shining, glistening, far from none.

Rocking ocean waves thunder as mist creeps upon the shore.

 

With a bubbled grasp, reaching for a source of breathed unknown, a lone surfer is hurtled and washed among the jagged rocks.

 

The current takes me, washes me, becomes me

Into millions of tiny shells, moving boxes, hundreds of tiny homes.

Into every glance, and every face is replaced, plankton.

(Yet you still are my friend. How? I wonder.) The oil that now separates us is thick, and we are covered, solid, black.

Yet these were the times for me myself, in which I could not even breathe.

The abyss is a dark place; but not darker than the grumbling whale’s belly or as potent as the water slurring within my own pits of despair.

 

Look! Can you see and hear the sound?

The hollow shell fills me with the forever-breaking roar, I press my ear against it harder; I listen, I see!

The baby with the green shovel, protected with white sticky sap and a shaded umbrella,

The monkey poking with a stick the oozing puss from a great Thresher’s jaw;

And there are the lovers alone along the crashing white foam,

The fisherman with grayed hair,

The roamers, metal detectors in hand, wandering blinded and heavy from the old salty air;

Each of who has looked everywhere—except for the showering beam coming from the twisted tower fueled from your friendly kerosene!

 

Halo of light, a reflective crystal of sand,

Your glow comes from within and around me.

The woman in white; her silk absorbing the fallen drops that exit near her veiled and chalky cheeks,

The bum curled and holy clothed, sleeping in the dunes,

As the grayed and charred snowflakes are spread.

 

A gull floats along the whispers, ever watching, ever listening?

Until the end of the night, darkness occurs.

 

Sun is setting, the sun is rising!

Into the air and into the sea!

We get washed away into the blue horizon,

Only to leave, with an eternal more.

 

I am the grained pebble, the castle, the stoned shack, the bone,

I am the rocky shore, the speckled Milky Way.

Alas! You ask to skip your rocks upon our shore? (Be satisfied in yourself).

 

We can just sink to the bottom, wash up again once more,

As little pebbles within the shells, little shrimp in the jelly’s belly, pod of dolphins, mermaids;

Coquina.

Waves.

 

- Karaghen Hudson, November 2012