Prospective considerations & perspectives while walking & practicing social distancing—
From Walt Whitman’s, Leaves of Grass
Oxen that rattle the yoke or halt in the shade, what is that
…….. you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my
…….. distant and daylong ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.
…….. I believe in those winged purposes,
And acknowledge the red yellow and white playing within me,
And consider the green and violet and the tufted crown
…….. intentional;
And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not
…….. something else,
And the mockingbird in the swamp never studied the
…….. gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.
The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
Ya-honk! He says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation;
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen closer,
I find its purpose and place up there toward the November
…….. sky.
The sharphoofed moose of the north, the cat on the
…….. housesill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
The brood of the turkeyhen, and she with her halfspread
…….. wings,
I see in them and myself the same old law.
The press of my foot in the earth springs a hundred
…….. affections,
They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
by Walt Whitman
from Leaves of Grass