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Old Friend

While clearing up my mailbox last evening, I found this note sent to myself with a poem by e.e cummings. The date is Jan 26 2001. I am no longer able to recall why this poem felt specially significant at the time. I do remember having found out about a week earlier that I was pregnant and feeling delirious with joy. The mail is sent from my work address at 11:51 A.M which would be my lunch hour.

As I read this again after six years, I love it just as much. It is like meeting an old friend after a long time. At first you awkwardly seek the comfort zone you once shared and can't seem to find now. After a while, habit takes over and the time that you spent away from each other turns immaterial. You are able to find the person you were when you last met.

not even the rain, has such small hands. 
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 colour 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

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