somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

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

~ee cummings

My husband and I were in our backyard the other night when he pointed out a tuft of weeds and yellow flowers that had sprung up by a tree. “Look at the flowers,” he said. “They’re closed for the night. And they”ll open again in the morning.”

This may be the most interaction I’ve had in a long time with the forces of nature, beyond sunset and sunrise, everything expanding and contracting, coming and going, solid and fluid, shaping, collapsing, building, demolishing, living and dying, all forms of life supported and eventually warping into a different form of bones and matter and DNA in the bay water with all the ashes that have been emptied into it from cylindrical containers.

Every night I check to see if the flowers are closed, and every morning I go out there to find them open again…