walt whitman's 49th beard

I think I'll just be a perpetual dreamer. No matter what my friends say and how people look at me askance and wonder what it is I'm thinking anyway. I've known those people and loved them, the ones I've read in thick volumes of poetry that have stood across the years, the men that radiate themselves without pretention. I've known them and stood in awe and made pleasantries without admitting what it was I was like. I can't pull my hand back. It wouldn't be worth it. Because I couldn't tell myself later that I tried.