Despite spending my entire life in the Northeast, I still hate the cold. Winter in New York lasts exactly as long as it is supposed to, from November to March, and I’m still regularly and unreasonably upset by it. And so to continue making good life choices, I moved to Ohio. Only a little more unpredictable, Ohio weather seems to be pretty in line with what I’ve grown up with, so I am prepared but still aggravated by the fact that I cannot go outside without losing feeling in my ears.
What I offer to you all this week is a way I can pretend that I’m still wrapped in the blanket of sunshine that is spring time while literally wrapped in the blanket that is my blanket of my bed. Happy December and let’s welcome Walt Whitman back into our lives, “Song Of Myself” specifically, a long and dense poem that is one of the top ten things that has changed my life.
“I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.”
During the winter, humans hunch their bodies and are inclined towards isolation. Disregarding the obvious seasonal reference, the openness, togetherness, and ease that comes with these first five lines is the exact opposite of January. Whitman is the master of self-love and connection. Our atoms, our foundations, are the same, and if I celebrate myself then I think you should as well. The act, especially in the midst of finals, of loafing around and just looking at the grass is how I wish I was spending my time.
“A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the
fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.”
I had the words “the song of me rising/from bed and meeting the sun” hanging above my bed at home for the longest time. Daybreak is beautiful, but the mornings aren’t always, so I prefer to think in terms of a song of meeting the sun. It’s hard to appreciate the sun in the winter as it is glaring off the snow or taunting you with distant warmth. Whitman can remind us of full-noon and the glory of light among trees as even middle path begins to look a little dead. There are still fields in February.
In a section of the poem, Whitman is asked by a child, “What is the grass?” and the poet is stymied. He offers several answers:
“I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven…
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord…
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation…
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.”
“Song of Myself” was published in Leaves of Grass, Whitman’s self-published collection. The grass becomes a hopeful woven flag, a dropped gift from God, a child, and a symbol of our ritualized grieving. Whitman does not tells us, the child in all of us, that the question is unanswerable, that the natural is forever shrouded in mystery. He offers us options, tells us that grass is only what our minds can stretch it to.
I spend a lot of time lounging on grass in the warmer months, both because I hate standing and because I love looking at the sky. I don’t do that in the winter, but as I reread “Song of Myself” for this article, I’m thinking maybe I should.
Image Credit: Poetry Foundation, Biography.com, Wikipedia
Poem found here.