"Lilac Futures."
""Tender little Buddha," she said of his least Buddha like
member.
She was probably quoting Allen Ginsberg who was probably
paraphrasing Walt Whitman.
After the Civil War, after the death of Lincoln, and that
was a good time to own railroad stocks.
But he was at the Library of Congress
doing research on alternative Americas,
reading up on the curiosities of Hindu philosophy,
studying the lithographs of stone carvings,
of strange couplets in a book.
She was taking off a blouse almost transparent,
the color of a smoky tangerine.
From Capitol Hill, Walt Whitman must
have been able to see the willows gathering river
haze in the cooling and still humid twilight.
He was in love with the trolley car conductor in the summer of,
what was it?
1867?
1868?"