Siamak Vossoughi
Hello, Walt Whitman, the young man said as he walked up California Street in the afternoon, greeting the poet in a gentlemanly manner. He laughed at the thought that the poet wouldn’t recognize him, or maybe he would. Iranian, he told Walt Whitman, or perhaps Persian, in your day.
It’s true either way, he said to the poet. Either way I am a part of everything I see along the way. I am a part of everything between my home and a schoolyard. Recognized and unrecognized. It doesn’t matter. It is morning, noon, and night. It is childhood, adulthood, and death.