Eric Cline

On the Field One Night

after Walt Whitman

as you waded through the aftermath, less a tide
of what was than what was no longer, less of what
than of who, I have to ask if you thought beyond
the bodies that had gone and to the bodies still
to come, those boys who would spring up from ground which seemed
so trampled, who would trample upon what would grow
from that which had not yet grown, fruits of the orchard 

yet to rise, those boys who would never be nurtured
by your hand, youths whose hirsute lips would never know
the tickle of yours, how the fronds you fancied teemed
not just with blades nor dragonflies nor frogs nor spill
of water from downed bird or risen fish, the awned
stalks changed just by being near, but with skin, the glut
of it so near as to be changed, and eyes so wide

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Eric Cline is a poet. His chapbooks include his strange boy eve (Yellow Chair Press, 2016), something farther across the ocean (Throwback Books, 2017), cicada shell: life in a queer body (Tenderness Lit, 2018) and The Temporary (forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press). A more extensive bibliography can be found at https://ericclinepoet.neocities.org/.