A Time for Poets – A Poem by Rowe Williams

Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land…

from the Introduction of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman believed in 
"the great poet". 
Perhaps more than he believed in 
real poets. 

He spends a lengthy introduction 
discussing the topic, 
entwining the poet with 
the society that birthed him. 

The poet without their society 
is a leaf missing its tree. 
Whitman believed 
in his people, his nation. 

The poet was the distilled essence 
of that human perfection. 
Nothing without it. 
Never above it. 

The poet is a dream. 
A hope that one leaf can 
embody not just a tree, 
but a forest. 

Whitman believed in that dream. 
That, somehow, quotidian transcendence 
was beauty 
and perfection. 

That we could see ourselves 
and infer the universe. 
The soil is good. 
The air is pure, the sun bright. 

Let us grow. 
Let us be the perfection 
Whitman believed in. 
Let us feel the poetry 

flowing in our veins.