"What is the grass?"

A child said, What is the grass?
fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than she.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition,
out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners,
that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child,
the produced babe of the vegetation. . . .

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life,
and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

by Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892
American poet, essayist, journalist, humanist
from Song of Myself ~ Part 6
P.S.
Click to see Autumn Gossamer!

So Placid and Self - Contained

Josef In The Windowsill: So Placid and Self - Contained!

"I think I could turn and live with animals,
they're so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another,
nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth."
(from Song of Myself, #32)

I loved this stanza as a student and for a very long time afterward, even now I guess. Yet I have to agree with the critic who said that Whitman probably didn't mean it -- maybe about the animals he did; but surely not about himself. After all, he lived a life of highly refined intellect, not possible (as far as we know) for cows or cats.

When reading Hugh Prather's book, I couldn't help but notice how often his examples were about puppies. Very appealing and touching, but hello we are not dogs or cats or cows. We are humans with baggage and memory and very complicated brains and the need for discourse.

FOR MORE ON PRATHER & LETTING GO
SEE MY FORTNIGHTLY BLOG
NOVEMBER 28; "Letting Go"

KITTI CARRIKER: A FORTNIGHTLY LITERARY BLOG
OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE
www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com