somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond

Autumn, 

I will remember all of my life lying with you beneath blankets in my bed. Glimpses of your little tooth grin and blue eye wonder peering over cotton mountains. (There you are!) Little lips leaning in for the sweetest kiss (over and over) that brings me back to faith in things like love, connection, need, and the simple complexity of personhood. I may not know how to teach all the truth this life holds. I'm afraid that, sometimes, even mom's are afraid of the dark. But I know this. I will spend my whole life surrounding you with the undoubtable truth that you are loved. And I will sing forever praises to the way your living touches the quiet places in my heart that lay dormant for so long, and makes them gasp with the surprise of feeling alive and vulnerable. 

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somewhere I have never traveled, 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 color 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.ecummings