(good luck.)

23.
you sea! i resign myself to you also-- i guess what you mean,
i behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
i believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me.

we must have a turn together, i undress,
hurry me out of sight of the land,
cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
dash me with amorous wet, i can repay you.

sea of stretch'd ground swells,
sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths,
sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd yet always-ready graves,
howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea,
i am integral with you, i too am of one phase and of all phases.

partaker of the influx and efflux i, extoller of hate and conciliation,
extoller of amies and those that sleep in each others' arms.

i am he attesting sympathy,
(shall i make my list of the things in the house and skip the house that supports them?)
i am not the poet of goodness only, i do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.

what blurt is this about vitue and about vice?
evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, i stand indifferent,
my gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait,
i moisten the roots of all that has grown.

did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?
did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?

i find one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,
soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,
thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

this minute that comes to me over the past decillions,
there is no better than it and now.

what behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder,
the wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

walt whitman
song of myself


[the holidays combine two difficult and strange/beautiful things: family and winter. the latter sometimes makes me sad, the former, cranky. in the context of either i sometimes become a version of myself that i don't particularly like. i forget, when i'm this person, to live by the meager list of conclusions that i've arrived at-- to note causes and withhold judgments, most especially regarding others.]