You will need a darkness well past midnight,
a single cone of desk light to guide you
sightful with its long white hand.

And you will need to need these words, spoken
across three separate centuries, his whispered
breath against your ear from narrow streets
of horse manure with drying sheets and longjohns
stretched between brick walls, spoken from
eyes that also heard these human musics,
saw the sky upside down in glinting water
and just like you knew the motionless wings,
soaring slow circles of the gulls.

No need to draw Walt closer:
he’s planned for this all along,
his yearning baffled curious brain
as good as looking at you from 1856
even as you read this, enjoying himself
right now at the very thought of you.