For the Love of Nature

"It doesn't matter what you say to a plant," he said. "You can just as well make up words; what's important is the feeling of liking it, and treating it as an equal."
-Don Juan, in Journey to Ixtlan by C. Castenada

Green 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 he.

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 dropt,
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.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among the black folks as among the white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass