Celebrate Myself

I celebrate myself – from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman 

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, formed from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Poetry is something that it's taken me until later in life to really enjoy. It was somewhat hard to comprehend. It's interpretation doesn't have a right answer, which is still something that's growing on me. (Full disclosure: I googled interpretations of this poem as I was working through my own.)

Now, poetry, like philosophy, is something that I turn to more often. This particularly poem, Song of Myself is one I've been slowly working my way through. What I like about it is how Whitman shows the full range of himself. The dark and the light. The energetic and the still. He makes a point that we aren't meant to stand as individuals that we as humans are a tribe that are connected together. He tries to show empathy between himself and others. 

I wrote my first poem in June of last year. I've had a couple others percolating in my head and I need to start making the time and silencing my inner critic in order to let them out.