A Child Said, What is the Grass?

Reflection, Jeniffer Sams, copyright 2012

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 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.

A Simple Leaf, ©ELFoto 2012 ©ELFoto (ElizaBeth Forbes)

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,

And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow

zones,

Growing among black folks as among 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.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,

It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,

It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;

It may be you are from old people and from women, and

from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,

And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old

mothers,

Darker than the colorless beards of old men,

Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

Warmth, Stephanie Wirt, Powhatan, VA

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!

And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths

for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men

and women,

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring

taken soon out of their laps.

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. . . .and nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and

luckier.

~ Walt Whitman

Whitman uses the imagery of a leaf of grass symbolizing the the pages of his poetry book, the form of his poetry, and a actual grass growing.  The first is a physical and natural meaning. The child in the poem, possibly Whitman's inner child, is asking Whitman what is the meaning of the natural world. Whitman does not have an answer for the child. Whitman's voice is later describing the cyclical nature of grass and how nature continues "onward and outward" in a never ending circle.  Whitman is also speaking metaphorically about his poetry and creativity as being cyclical and ongoing.