somewhere i have never travelled

I don't know if I have a favorite poem, or a favorite poet for that matter. Usually I say Emily Dickinson, and I would probably say that now if pressed, but there are others that I hold in as high esteem: Pablo Neruda, Nikki Giovanni, Edna Millay, ee cummings. It is this last whose poem comes to mind at this moment, and so, here it is.

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