Blustery
Neil Shepard
Blustery 25-below, O Walt, I wouldn't go
And live with animals tonight—
Or anytime soon. How do
They survive in their snowy lairs?
How could I, for that matter, who
Haven't taken the wild Swedish plunge
Every chilly night to thicken my fur layer
By layer, I who doze by the fire
With the phone to my ear,
Doze the whole new year
Listening to my wife in such weird
Zone-warping tropical heat, naked,
Whispering her desire for 50-below,
If it brings her home. That's fur
Of a different nature, Walt, layer
Upon layer of love that glows, grows
Over us like a sun-lit coat.
O we are hothouse flowers, Walt,
Naked and limply alive in a narrow
Equatorial band. Otherwise, we die.
Walt, we must make do
With our lovely human hair.
It's been snowing all day and I'm dreading the drive home, but, I am looking forward to sitting next to the fireplace, with my dogs, Otto Friedrich's The Grave of Alice B. Tolkas, and a cup of hot cocoa I just picked up that brews just like coffee.
I am grateful for the warmth of my home, that I have a home in this crazy and dizzingly unsettling start to the new century. We're eleven years in to number twenty-one, and my lord, does it ever have a right hook.
I love that the speaker of the poem is talking to Walt Whitman. That the speaker informs the luminous poet of the people, that we are more than the body electric, we are hothouse flowers.
I am a hothouse flower, I just didn't know it. I'm not temperamental, or high maintenance, but I can't live without love. Who can? If we don't have love in our lives, we wither and turn bitter like the stone at the center of a peach. No matter who we are, no matter our circumstances, how guarded we are, we all find our way to love. We love, that's what we humans do. I'm coming to understand that not all of us find the one, and although I don't want to accept this, I eventually will, and decide that finding a mirror, or multiple mirrors rather than the love of a lifetime, that comes with violins and much fervor, well, that just may have to do.
But, I'm an optimist. Tomorrow is another day, another year, another decade, another life.
Ultimately, each of us find love that nurtures the wild orchid blooming in our hearts.
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