2.
I SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the
branches,
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous
leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of
myself,
But I wondered how it could utter joyous leaves,
standing alone there, without its friend, its lover
near—for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves
upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away—and I have placed it in sight in
my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear
friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token—it makes me think
of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in
Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a
lover, near,
I know very well I could not.
______
Harvey wrote the lines "uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover near. I know very well I could not." He drew two live oaks intertwined, and hidden in each tree, comprising each scrimshaw branch, in tiny calligraphy, are our names. (It's his way of carving a heart and putting our initials in it. Did I mention he was a romantic?)
He never had to...and how did he know that?
______
Prayer: Walt Whitman
O great grey poet
whose beard itself is Spanish
moss perpended from
that face I love; o
lover of men, lover of
women, as now I
revisit my own
amputation--o how can
I? do I? will I?
