i thank You God: by ee cummings

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting. -- E. E. Cummings

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 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 unimaginably You?

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

I actually read quite a few ee cummings poems today, looking for the right one to fit how I feel (which is maybe odd, since I feel sick today, and what speaks to me in cummings poetry is the joy and aliveness of his words). However, this is a classic and a beautiful poem no matter how I'm feeling. I'm feeling sick, a little worried, tired and a little bit down. So thinking about God's leaping greenly spirits might pull me out of myself a bit. When I read his poetry, I just want to sit and skim and settle into one or two as they call me... I like to read his slim volumes front, back and sideways. I've always thought that you had to read a cummings poem as if you were reading a circle, to make the words make sense. I love the nonlinear joyfulness of them. They get to the heart of the emotions. Maybe that's what it is that I love about his poetry - when I read them, I feel strong emotions; it speaks directly to my emotional heart.

This is a love poem. It's a poem to God, to the Earth, to the spirits of the day and of nature. I've also heard it read at weddings, which is lovely.

Saying "yes!" to life. It makes me think of Yoko Ono's exhibit where she had a telescope pointed at the ceiling and had written, so tiny, a "yes". Yes to everything.

Maybe this wasn't the right poem for today. I love it, but I'm cold, sick, tired, having one of those days where I fall back a step or two in my march towards A Life I Love. I'm not feeling like saying "yes".

Maybe what it's really about is that no matter how you're feeling, the Earth is saying Yes, God is saying Yes... there are Yesses all around me, depending on where I look. Even if all I feel like saying is "No," there is still plenty of "Yes" the minute I change my mind.

And maybe saying "No" is really a "Yes" of sorts, anyway. I'm saying "Yes" to staying in bed and trying to give myself a break.

Well. I haven't done justice to this, one of my favorite poems of all, but that's okay.