e e cummings - Oct. 14, 1894 – Sept. 3, 1962

e e cummings

e e cummings wrote something like 2,900 poems, including many I love and also one of my very favorites; I've carried it in my wallet for 40-some years. It describes the sort of day you're having when everything feels right and marvelous and good -- both Mother Nature and Lady Luck are coddling you. In October, 2007, at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, I recited this poem at his grave for my audience of two, dear Mark and dear Abby. It happened to be one of those amazing days -- there was a true blue dream of sky and the greenly spirits of the trees were leaping.



i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes


(i who have died am alive again today
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)


how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any -- lifted from the no
of all nothing -- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?


(now the ears of my ears wake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)