In an Alliterative Way

Living out on the country makes it easy to take the Christmas tree to its final resting place (just across the road) each year.

There are eight trees now which is a tangible testament to the alacritous transit of time

Bravely Afraid

Yellow Goldenrod writing tablets
with ruled lines on roughened paper were perfect for fat No. 2 pencils

I wish, sometimes, I could remember exactly, the feel and smell of the paper or the way the tip of the pencil would glide
over the surface.

I struggled then to make cursive letters like a capital "Z", "F" or that odd-looking "Q". I printed more often than I wrote in cursive
and I still do.

That fibrous paper had lines that wished I could write on them -- like some could. I was always afraid that my words would run out or that my thoughts would disappear before I could bring my struggling effort to form

I am still afraid that my words will run out when I open a window to type -- and often they do. Sometimes, though, it feels like I can still smell the gray-stained wood on my fingers.

So, in spite of fear, I resolve...
even though my hands aren't as small or nearly as supple.

* * *

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 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 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

~ From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings