Walt Whitman

I live about a two miles from where Walt Whitman currently resides. He is buried behind the Dunkin Donuts, before the Route 130 traffic circle. In New Jersey, there is a poet behind every Dunkin Donuts.

I drive by Harleigh Cemetary often. Someone always cuts me off at the forced merge approaching the sign with his wild beard staring at me. I center myself and think, "A great poet lives there." Garbage strewn on the sidewalks, and among the chaos of a five way stop, I take a moment to think about beauty, and writing and poetry.

Today is four months since Lucy was born. I feel her so deep within my belly, so immersed in my being, that it as if she has always been my daughter. I feel as though I have mourned her for a lifetime. I remember when I first started reading blogs, still grotesquely postpartum--bound, weeping breasts, so tender I was...a great deal of babylost mamas I began reading then had just passed the four and five month marks. So, perhaps that is why this one is hitting me so profoundly. Before this month, I thought of this day as another of the many days of the month that I would cry for my daughter.

But when I began reading what these other women were going through, I remember asking myself this litany of questions:

Where will I be in this grief process in four months?
Will I be trying for another baby? (Uh, not even remotely close to there yet).
Would I still howl everyday?
Would commercials still make me lose it and throw things at the television?
Would my daughter be saying Lucy's name as much as I am?
Would I have hair?
Which friends are still going to be here, which friends are going to be gone?
Will so and so ever call me? (no.)

Maybe it is just that the rawness is not so raw, and the acute pain of Lucy's death is not so acute...but deep deep within me the grief has settled and made itself at home. Comments from yesterday were so so appreciated. I devoured them between painting in the sun, and being outside with my beautiful family.

So, for today, I want to quote some of that Federico Garcia Lorca poem that I love on this day, Ode to Walt Whitman

Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies...
Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream.
This is the world, my friend, agony, agony.
Bodies decompose beneath city clocks,
war passes by in tears, followed by a million grey rats,
the rich give their mistresses
small illuminated dying things,
and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.