Leaves of Grass

I believe in Leaves Of Grass. Not the individual dew gathered newborn grass that makes our skin itch and rash after too much of its touch, but the religious and spiritual leaves of grass that Walt Whitman delivers in his farewell collection of poems.

I was given the book on my thirteenth birthday by my grandmother whom had it given to her by her mother. The book smelled of pine sol and nursing homes. It had a burlap cover that was characterized with smudged ink splats along the spine and a piece of leather holding together the back cover. It was hideous. Being the materialized tween that I was I immediately disregarded the atrocity and shoved it to the back of my bookshelf.

For much of my teenage years I lived my life in this way. I would take one look at something; an opportunity, object, or even a person, and judged it in a way that secluded myself as far away as possible.

On my seventeenth birthday my grandmother passed away and I was lost. Besides being completely devastated, I was pissed. I was mad that she left me. I was mad that the only grandmother I had ever known was now nothing more than a past tense mirage. I was so upset by this that I tore into my room and began completely destroying the place. I knocked over my lamp, pulled out my dresser drawers and threw books from the shelves. However promising the idea of destroying my room was, my swollen red eyes and exhausted breath forced me to give up.

When I could finally breathe again, I was on the floor surrounded by all of my childhood cartoon books. Under my copy of Betty and Veronica, I noticed Leaves of Grass. I don’t know why I even grabbed the book. Was this rock bottom? Was this the end of everything beautiful? I fluttered through the pages until I stopped on a marked page which simply read “Charlotte…” Under it was this poem; “read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.” In other words, the beginning of everything beautiful.

I believe the things we love have a way of coming back to us in the end. I believe that love is as strong as death. Love is just as real and just as inevitable as death. It does not matter if you are eighteen or eighty; when love comes it never really leaves, and when death comes it does not take the love away, but savors it. When my grandmother left, her love remained.

Walt Whitman’s journey began at a place just as dark and lost as mine. His poems carry me through life and allow me to openly welcome the unknown and interesting.

My leaves of grass is interspersed with weeds and meadow flowers, allowing for the bad and the beautiful to find its way into my life. How would we know how sweet the flowers smell if we never experience the foulness of the unkempt weeds.