Sometimes My Words

Sometimes my words run
down my cheek and I
need assurance they're
the ink of poetry.
Men are baffled and afraid
of feminism; but Whitman
confides: " You are not one jot
less than I am,    you are ultimate
in the right," * and I thank Walt
and work on, using a compass of
my own to voyage as I please.
All the watch- stars are women
and I am free. I carriage myself
where horizon fires lick the sea,
galaxies merge and I deliver a
cosmos that is mine.


* From " A Woman Waits For Me", by Walt Whitman