Write Night: Poetry

Okay, is it ironic that when I saw tonight's prompt that I groaned? What does that tell you about me and poetry? Obviously, we are not compatible. I have always viewed writing poems like writing good jokes. Very few people are good at writing either.

But with Valentine's Day looming, my mind wanders to the what I consider to the the ulitmate love poem, e.e. cumming's "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond." Even this heartless cynic is powerless to cumming's passion.

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