After Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth"

The chilling shade and the albino dog
who scratched my car to the window
out of friendliness,
the water, too, that in the pan
over wood and that in its banks
between woods
and that sailing in sky, and the boy
and girl who stole my reading spot
out of innocence—
these I clutch out of loneliness
as they sail across it.

Copyright © 2009 Ralph Salisbury All rights reserved
from
Silverfishreview Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission