With My Feet on the Scum-An Homage to Walt Whitman

I wonder from the floor of the gleaming golden surface

and the broken blue sky,

The unbounded oxygen and burning flotsam,

And I Imagine too my floating form, my flat-paddle soles

o’er the break of the waves,

The sea foam that collects on my toes, the mist that

masks my scent from the water,

The weeds that kiss my feet, and there ones that wrap

my ankle,

The gulls that dip their legs, the gulls that plunge 

and pull up their meal.

Has anyone ever seen the bottom?

From the middle of the sun?

From the deck of the ship transcending the tides?

From the dead of the shore?

From the turret of the palace above the break wall?

The gleaming golden sun that is hard to see

doesn’t need me—and I don’t need it.

I will stand with my feet on the scum, 

In solitude with the fish and the blue and the bottom 

of things

With my cheek turned up waiting to be caught