"Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings...That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all" – Whitman, from "Germs"












Dredger

And under it all only the dredger of waters knows,
the watergrass spindling up like wild strands of chemistry,
that twisting life that lives in the silence of green
whose short tufts feed the silver guppies who themselves
get gulped by the pike and the marauding musky.
Wild oaks rise up on the other side where air is the show but also
digs down into the deep of the black bank soil for breath,
rises up each day to warm the cheek of each limb leaf by leaf
then leans, when winter comes, back down to water,
like the dredger of water comes to know as he swings his paddle
that the virtues the sun the water the leaf is what he is.