Whitman was actually referring not to death itself, but to a new sense and vision of life that he hoped would arise and permeate the entirety of life in America. This vision of life embodied a sense of the eternal. It was a spiritual and religious awakening he hoped for - an awakening which he knew was fundamental to bringing forth the true potential and dream of America.
The poems he dreamed of were actually to be written by the lives of ordinary men and women, who would express a vision of eternity in the here and now as they lived out their lives and dreams amid everyday circumstances - bringing to fruition a great new Dream of America.
In these fifty-seven short pieces, James Hilgendorf offers lovely fragments of this new world emerging in all of our hearts.
"To live eighty or ninety years; to have been rich; to have found love; to have traveled to the ends of the earth; to have been the president of a big company; to have been a professor of this or that; to have played golf whenever you wished in your retirement; to have been a great sports hero; to have been a beautiful woman; to have eaten delicious food every day of your life; to have won the lottery; to have invented a better computer; to have been a philanthropist; to have taken vacations wherever and whenever you wanted; to have been lucky in your health; to have lived in the most beautiful places; to have owned a beautiful home - any of these, and infinitely more desires fulfilled and goals won were nothing at the end of the day, at the end of your allotted time, if you had not found the secret door, the way into another dimension, as you stood with your two feet on the ground and the spring air soft about your head, and the rain and thunder and lightning and rainbows and people everywhere and failed to notice that where you stood and who you were was eternity."