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At some point early in his life, the Argentine poet, Juan L. Ortiz (1896-1978), chose staying to live in his native Entre Ríos province over moving to Buenos Aires, the cultural center of his country. Though he was encouraged by some friends of his to make the move so that his work would be disseminated and appreciated by sophisticated readers from the big city, the poet remained in the small town of Gualeguay and later moved to the provincial capital, Paraná. He highly valued his home landscapes, and his poetry reflects his relationship with the natural world. One Ortiz poem in particular, "Deja las letras..." from De las raíces y del Cielo (1958), refers to the proverbial rural/urban dualism in a way that upends the tendency to hierarchize the city over the country and the human over the nonhuman. This article analyzes "Deja las letras..." as an ecopoetic invitation to recognize the inherent interrelationships among humans and nonhumans. Part of this recognition requires a reconceptualization of "nature" as heterogenous and made up of nonlinear interconnections and the spaces in between, in a "mesh," using environmental humanist Timothy Morton's terminology. Recognizing and incorporating ourselves in this mesh, the poem suggests, can allow humans to keep our humanity while, at the same time, we learn empathy for nonhumans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]