the deepest secret nobody knows

I've been doing a lot of writing here in the past couple of months.  Most of it has either originated or wound up on the Internet.  The reaction has been for the most part positive and it has been fun to engage in a running dialogue with the folks who are kind enough to post comments here and there.

A week or so ago, I posted a piece here about the death of my good friend Hugh Tedder.  The post was entitled "In Just Spring" after a line from a poem by ee cummings.  I confessed in the post that this was about the sum total of my knowledge of cummings. 

A lady named Beth posted a comment a couple of days later which you can read for yourself.  But she shared with me another poem by cummings called "i carry your heart with me."  It was so beautiful that I thought I would share it with you too.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it
in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
i go you go my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing my darling)

i fear no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or man can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Blogger wouldn't let me render it exactly as mr. cummings wrote it but that's pretty close.  Not that cummings was much of a stickler on such matters as punctuation.

Isn't that the most wonderful thing you've ever read?  Well, it's right up there anyway.

The advent of the Internet has brought about a whole universe of trouble.  But every now and again it spits out some grace.  Like when a nice yoga teacher in Austin, Texas (of all damn things) shares a poem out of the wild blue yonder with a total stranger whose writing she liked.

And I hope someday to share the poem again.  I hope to share it again someday with someone who is "whatever a moon has always meant."

I very much look forward to that day.