poetry masters

oh yes, we’ve poetry masters
like America’s Walt Whitman
who thump covered a lot of bases
green waving fields, lightening flashes
blood red and dead gray fallen soldiers

bubbles of crystal clear rippling streams
by farmer’s long faces and torches
on the global sphere mystery and chants
for ten thousand of thousands of years
forward and back leaping

know how times have changed
for all of us
for in all of his words
of roots, songs, joys, and power,
of fury, nomads, nations, legions, submission,

banners, fires burning, pageants
and frost-mellowed berries
in those cherished times of olde
some lonely dim shadowed snowy eve
with walking staff and collar up

Walt never mentioned
stopping on his way home
to pick up a lotto ticket,
pizza with his favorite topping
or a movie

if here now, today
maybe stop for a pizza and a beer
i don't know, don't think he'd own a TV
and, stewards of the earth,
where'd the clear water go