Walt Whitman had his Leaves of Grass,

Lincoln, and the Civil War.

We’ve got FasTrak Passes,

Bush and Cheney and an endless war.

Condy Rice and waterboarding,

squirrels in their own darkness hoarding

another country’s oil reserves

while we preserve our global warming.

We are our own dark clouds forming

from manufactured intelligence

where there was no intelligence at all.

A pheasant in a cage of our own making,

and wondering how we ever got into this mess.

Wondering what in 2009

will lead us home and to what?

We claim to be Recycling while

polar bears climb onto their disappearing ice floes

and look for another airline headed south.

Where are the bright people hiding out?

Is Washington DC just another homeless 

camp of uselessness? How about Sacramento?

An election coming up, Oh boy!

Show me the polls one more time,

and just one more pundit with the 

electronic game play arrows and traffic 

and weather forecast updates at 7 and 11.

I’ll try to stay awake and believe you

while surveying the first Leaves of Grass.

And wondering how we ever got here from there.