This poem, of all love poems, brought back a not so fine memory. Here’s the prompt and the e.e. cummings poem is below my original day 25 poem!
Napowrimo Prompt for day 25: “Begin by reading e e cummings’ poem [somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond]. This is a pretty classic love poem, so well-known that it has spawned at least one silly meme. Today’s prompt challenges you to also write a love poem, one that names at least one flower, contains one parenthetical statement, and in which at least some lines break in unusual places.”
somewhere i travelled beyond good sense
that rose like the “eyes deeper than all roses”
turned to a garlic or maybe worse,
a chestnut tree in bloom (have you ever smelled it?)
in my naivete, i sent him–the scoundrel–these
lines in a letter, (little did i know):
“your slightest look
easily will unclose me/ though i have
closed myself as fingers”/i, too easily opened,
the experience, a rose turned garlic. Truly,
i cast e.e.cummings’ words before
swine. i apologize e.e. i didn’t know!
Jacquelyn Markham (4/25/2023)
link to this poem: https://poets.org/poem/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
E. E. Cummings – 1894-1962
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
Poet Voice 