Nerve

In the next scene Walt Whitman

is walking around Boston

Common. He’s young.

It’s winter. Emerson

is there. They walk

and talk for hours, or really

Emerson talks. He scolds

Whitman for slavering

after tree knots and bobbing

with the swimmer. Whitman nods

but in his head he’s busy

tallying his orgasms.

At the carousel

an ancient Puritan is passing

his hat, singing, “Kill It Babe.”

Dozens of geese have gathered

on the frozen pond,

standing on one leg,

tucking the other like a dagger

into their feathery centers.

Well, Emerson asks the poet,

what do you have to say for yourself?

And Whitman, respectfully,

but sure now

all the way down in his bones

where the deep, frontier feeling

of disobedience lives, says,

essentially, go [  ] yourself.

I’ll go my own way.