Keep reading more poetry

Eecummings

Again, in celebration of National Poetry Month (we love a party!), a favorite from e.e. cummings:
[somewhere i have never travelled]

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 myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, 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

-e.e. cummings

 


About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.

1 comment to " Keep reading more poetry "
  • Kim

    Patti, I remember *loving* the book “The Outsiders” when I was 11. Written by a 17-year old, S.E. Hinton, the story just touched my heart — enough that I read it again and again. (I should re-read it now to better understand what moved me so!)

    Johnny Depp didn’t star in the movie version, I’m afraid, so perhaps you didn’t see it. (:

    Here’s the Frost poem from the book — the first poem I managed to memorize:

    Nature’s first green is gold,
    Her hardest hue to hold.
    Her early leafs a flower;
    But only so an hour.
    Then leaf subsides to leaf.
    So Eden sank to grief,
    So dawn goes down to day.
    Nothing gold can stay.

    I can still hear the voice of the young man who lay dying in the book, saying to his friend, “Stay gold, Ponyboy.”

    I wonder what poetry 11-year olds read now? Was Emma a Billy Collins fan at 11? Frost? ee cummings? Rich? Piercy?

    Love your posts, as always, my friend.

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