Uncle Walt, Father Abraham, & You

A Poem of Americans Worth Remembering Chapter 1: Simplicity’s Hideous Inelegance

Honestly, how many of us Have ever read LEAVES OF GRASS Cover to cover? 

Or even half of it? 

How many know That 1st edition was only 80 pages or so, but that it grew to over 300 during Uncle Walt’s long life? 

Whitman is the Great-grandfather of American poetry, but I like to think of him walking the streets of D.C. during the Civil War heading to and from the military hospital, where he held the hands of dying boys, taking down their words for their final letters home. 

I think of Uncle Walt, as those boys called him, and called out to him, weeping quietly, out of their presence, of course — but always going back, a freshly laundered shirt, beard trimmed neatly. 

Always back to them, hour after hour, day after day, loving them, caring for and about all those dying boys. So many of them but each one precious. Each face belonging to a single soul Touched and touching Walt until finally his nerves shattered his heart broke and he could barely breathe — but up until that very moment, think of him at the end of each horrific day, walking home, weeping again for all the pain and loss. Then rising the next morning to do it all once more. 

Many mornings on his way to this perdition, he’d pass by Abraham Lincoln, taking his own lonely journey, going, perhaps to the telegraph station, the last place he’d been the night before, to collect his own latest news of death and loss. 

I think of these two men making eye contact and each nodding silently, maybe, touching with fingertips the brims of their hats, and going on. 

Walt would later write about the pain in Lincoln’s face, especially in his eyes, and about the humanity of man, flesh and blood, sinew and spirit, rocked to the deepest darkness a man can know — Lincoln, not yet marble and iconic, Walt himself not realizing his own immortality on the bookshelves of millions — this was before all that. 

This was back when they walked quietly towards and passed one another carrying burdens of unimaginable weight, in shared and separate duties, day after day, week after week; in truth, for all eternity. 

Billions of us have walked on this earth and lie beneath grass and cement, marked and unmarked. And billions more of us will pass here one day, too; each leaving brief traces behind, footprints, DNA never noticed, landfills holding our old soup cans, private papers family pics, and precious mementos under the dirt, right next to the soup cans. 

Tomorrow if the morning is chilly our frosty exhalations from lungs and lips, our breaths escaping, will evaporate into cold morning air — just like Uncle Walt, just like Father Abraham, we will leave these reminders of ourselves behind. 

Few of us will ever make, during our flickering moments the kind of marks they did.