O Living

It has been a bleak, gray day here in Davenport, Iowa, marked with a crispness and frigidity in the air which makes me realize that winter is indeed here. Even as I viewed the beginnings of a magnificent sunset of deep pinks and purples through our second-story window, a twinge of melancholy manifested itself within me as the day began to segue into night. Perhaps the sadness was the result of too little sleep or the beginnings of a sore throat. It might have commenced because after rummaging through my cedar chest in an attempt to find our passports, I rediscovered old letters and postcards received by precious friends while in college, and the passage of time seemed even more pronounced. Before email, blogs, cell phones, texts, we wrote letters. Page after page we filled with our thoughts, our feelings, our questions, and our supposed and real sufferings and laments. We decorated the outside of the envelopes with images torn from magazines and witty quotes from our favorite authors, theologians, or philosophers. These letters are lovely really; a tribute to a time past but living in the relationships which still remain. A postcard with Ms. Emily Dickinson on the front written by my friend Julie caught my eye and I pulled it from the sundry items in my memory box. It now lies on the table beside my bed. And though attempting to drive away these dark feelings by drinking cup after cup of hot coffee, the absence of many of those closest to me was unmistakably profound.

Today is poetry Wednesday. My dear friend Molly posted one of my favorite poems by Walt Whitman; one which I even considered for today. In the end, I opted for e.e. cummings. I first heard this poem via Woody Allen's work, Hannah And Her Sisters. I am not sure if I ever read the entire poem until today, but it is lovely.

somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

e.e. cummings

somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which I cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though I have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal as Spring opens

(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, I and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands