Guest Poet, Brian Luster

 

If I Were Walt Whitman

 

If I were Walt Whitman, I would sing, but not of myself

I would sound my barbaric yawp to sing of Brooklyn; it contains multitudes

I would sing of the orthodox Jews in Borough Park

Of the fishermen on the boats in Sheepshead Bay

Of the Danes and the Swedes and the Finns who meet at their athletic clubs in Dyker Heights

Of the Russians and Ukrainians and Turks and Georgians who have their businesses on Kings Highway

Of the old-time families in Canarsie who say “berl” for “boil”

Of the Chinese and Vietnamese with their noodle shops and the Mexicans with their taquerias in Sunset Park

Of the Poles in Greenpoint, neighbors to Williamsburg with more Jews, but also Puerto Ricans and hipsters (Do they talk to one another? I wonder)

 

If I were Walt Whitman, I would carry a camera, not a pen

My boot-soles would tramp every corner of the borough

From beneath Brooklyn’s bridge where the ferries land (I would not cross on the ferry; I would eat ice cream)

To the promenade in Brooklyn Heights

And from there down to the fair ways of Red Hook, where the longshoremen lived

And then to Gowanus with its reeking canal

And on through Park Slope, up the hill to Prospect Park and the botanic garden

Turning south I would pass the Victorians of Ditmas Park and wander through Midwood and Gravesend

And so come to Coney Island to walk on Mermaid Avenue where Woody Guthrie once lived

At one end of Coney Island is Sea Gate—private and closed to outsiders

At the other end is Manhattan Beach—free and open to all

 

But I would not stop; my restless feet would urge me on

To the narrow streets of Gerritsen Beach, where the houses are cheek-by-jowl and have water in their backyards

And past the outrageous mansions of Mill Basin

And farther still to Paerdegat, whose waters flow into Jamaica Bay and mingle with the marshes and islands

I would go even farther, to landlocked East New York and Brownsville and Bushwick

 

Turning south again I would traverse the borough on Rockaway Avenue and Rockaway Parkway, not to the Rockaways (which are in Queens), but to Canarsie Pier

Here, at the end of the road, I would make my way past the apartment-dwellers who come for a taste of salt air

Past the families who bring their barbecue grills

Past the fisherman hoping to catch a striped bass or a fluke or a porgy or a blue

Past the crabbers with their wire traps and their pieces of chicken to use as bait

I would pass them all and find an empty spot on a bench overlooking the water

And as the sun sets, the shadows of Brooklyn would be cast onto the surface of Jamaica Bay

The shadows of the mansions and the apartment buildings and the brownstones

The shadows of the butchers and the fishmongers and the produce vendors

The shadows of the brewers and the distillers and the vintners

The shadows of the restaurateurs and the entrepreneurs

The foodies, the hipsters, the locavores, the community gardeners, the activists, the artists, the musicians, the poets

The newcomers and the old-timers

All the multitudes of Brooklyn

 

© Brian Luster 2012