Poetry Thursday - ee cummings

the moon looked into my window
it touched me with its small hands
and with curling infantile
fingers it understood my eyes cheeks mouth
its hands(slipping)felt of my necktie wandered
against my shirt and into my body
the sharp things fingered tinily my heart life

the little hands withdrew, jerkily, themselves

quietly they began playing with a button
the moon smiled she
let go my vest and crept
throught the window
she did not fall
she went creeping along the air

over houses
roofs

And out of the east toward
her a fragile light bent gatheringly

ee cummings

Cummings was the first poet whose work I remember following. And I mean that more literally than figuratively. We read some of his poems in an anthology (in high school, this was), and for the first time I went to the library in search of more. I remember being shocked at how thick the collected works were. And then equally shocked to realize that cummings had almost lived until I was born. I had missed him, but only just. Poets could be alive. This changed everything.

Twenty some-odd years later, I stood stock-still on Commercial Street in Provincetown, suddenly remembering that there was a cummings poem that started with one of the names on our list of "possibles" for the baby who would be joining our family soon.

I'm looking forward to someday telling our son all the reasons his name is his. Poetry can be alive. And can change everything.

(More musings on time and poetry are here.)
And tips o' the hat to Auntie Nish and SarahJ for setting me to thinking of cummings again.