A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the sky and looking at the streets, And all the lonely men I met . . . I love you, I love you, West Coast, out of the east.
I saw you standing at the counter of a fast food deli waiting to be served something hot and sweet, And I looked at your face in the lights.
I thought about your poems, how you crossed the valley, thought of the great thoughts you conceived and how the wind blows out here as well as you as you stepped out once again.
I saw you go home and saw the sunset burning across the ocean and headed into the west luminous and glittering as a tooth in a smile.
A Supermarket in California
- Allen Ginsberg